


Hot Headed, Cold Hearted

by FunkyMeihem



Series: Meihem Adventures [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canada, F/M, Meihem - Freeform, Wilderness Survival, junkmei, meirat, the junkers get to wear coats
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2018-12-15 02:03:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11796141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunkyMeihem/pseuds/FunkyMeihem
Summary: Mei accepts a new mission into the frozen wildernesses of the far north, accompanied by a strangely-acting Bastion, to solve a decades old mystery. Junkrat and Roadhog, distrustful of the omnic, insist on going with them both. When a simple scouting mission goes awry and turns deadly with enemies old and new, leaving them stranded and separated, each of them faces a struggle to survive and reunite.(Sequel to: The A-Mei-Zing Outback Adventure)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to: The A-Mei-Zing Outback Adventure and takes place in an unspecified amount of time after their misadventures in the desert.  
> The completed prequel can be read here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/8457571/chapters/19376416

“Agent 20151107, Mei-Ling Zhou, please report to the briefing room.”  
  
Athena’s soothing voice chimed from her communicator, just as Mei had stuffed an overly large mouthful of egg tart into her jaws. Of course. She coughed and sputtered as she tried to swallow, patting her chest roughly to try and force it all down. “ _Hhfk_!”  
  
Athena’s icon blinked before speaking again, “Miss Zhou, you appear to be choking. Mercy is nearby, if you require-”  
  
“No!” She rasped, clearing her throat before speaking more clearly. “No, I’m fine. Sorry about that. Is it an emergency?”  
  
“It was not specified as such and Winston has indicated that you will be very pleased with the news, as it is regarding your science division. Please report to briefing when you are able, but I believe you have time to finish your egg tart in a less vigorous manner.”  
  
Mei was already pushing her tray away from her, said egg tart still mostly uneaten along with the rest of the meal she had barely just started. “Thank you, Athena, but this can wait! Oh, could you message Jamison and let him know I can’t meet him for lunch because of my meeting, he’s probably already on his way here? Tell him I’m sorry, too!”  
  
“I will contact Agent Junkrat now and let Winston know you are on your way. Good day, Miss Zhou.”  
  
The icon went dark, and Mei dumped her meal into the bin on her way out the door, her snowflake pin swaying cheerfully as she bustled out of the cafeteria and started to make her way through the main base. If it was any sort of news regarding the science team, she wanted to hear it right away. True, her science team only consisted of herself, Winston, Bastion, and a rotating handful of lower-ranking agents, but she was still willing to do whatever it took to get things started off the right way. After her disastrous mission into the Outback, Winston was finally starting to grant her the time and resources to get their division off the ground, but Overwatch business had kept getting in the way. But if he finally had good news for her…maybe today would be the day!  
  
“Miss Zhou, there is a reply message from Agent Junkrat.” Athena’s icon lit up again. “He…wishes to relay his understanding of the delayed lunch date, as well as good tidings and good luck to you, but his phrasing is littered with curses and very colorful language. Would you like me to relay the exact message to you?”  
  
“Oh. No thanks, the nice thought is enough.” She pushed open the door to the briefing room, where Winston was already waiting for her. He sat in the main command chair, the only one that had been tailored for a genetically-altered gorilla, and his features were lit up by the only source of light in the room, the enormous main monitor where a soft pulsing ray of light in the center meant Athena was listening. With a little polite bow of her head, she hurried over towards the seat next to him, unable to keep the smile off her face. “Ni hao, Winston! I came as soon as I could.”  
  
He nodded to her, glasses glinting vivid white-blue in the light of the monitor. “Good afternoon, Mei. I know you’d hate to be kept waiting, so we’ll just jump into things. Although to start…it’s happened again.”  
  
“Is it Bastion?” she sighed.  
  
“Indeed. Athena’s been keeping track of things ever since I first noticed it, but it hasn’t stopped. For several months now, every time it’s presented with a map, it keeps marking that one location over and over again.” He nodded up to the main screen, which flashed up a world map before zooming in to North America, then to Canada, then to a northern quadrant of Canada, and then zoomed in a final time to show a satellite picture of the mountain forests. “I sent it a map of Numbani, it sent me back the coordinates in Canada. I ask it to review its last maneuvers from the battle in Annecy, it sent me the reviews, but also that same location. Over and over. The first few times I thought it was an error, but it’s far too consistent. Athena’s even been able to isolate it to almost a direct latitude and longitude.”  
  
She nodded, writing this down in her tablet. “Whenever I pulled up a topical map, it was always trying to point to Canada as well. But I’ll admit I didn’t think much of it until you pointed it out. So, what does it mean? Is that why you called me in?”  
  
“So far it doesn’t seem to be directing us to…anything? Just a patch of Canadian wilderness. The closest civilization is a town called Tentpeg, but that’s hundreds of miles away. It’s still possible all this is some sort of mistake or error but…I’ve got a feeling we need to check things out, just to be sure.”  
  
“That makes sense,” she agreed.  
  
“I don’t want this information spread amongst the team, I can’t stress that enough. Torbjorn, Zarya, Junkrat, and a number of other agents already do not have the most positive view of our omnic relations inclusion act. And I don’t want to deal with any fallout if they suspect one of our robotic allies might be…er, questionable. But I haven’t made any headway at all into E-54 unit’s motives. All translation programs I’ve run have been inconclusive or denied.” He drummed at another collection of buttons on the control board, and both scientists adjusted their glasses at the same time as lines upon lines of indecipherable numbers and letters scrolled across the monitors. “Nothing makes sense here. Either it doesn’t know its own reasoning, or it’s not telling us something.”  
  
Mei frowned, brows furrowing. “That can’t be right? Is Bastion even capable of subterfuge? I don’t like that idea at all, it seems so friendly…”  
  
“I’m not certain subterfuge would be the right word. According to Torbjorn, our particular E-54 is already something of an anomaly. He designed its original blueprints and even he can’t figure out why this one seems so keen on this target location, any more than he can figure out why it restarted itself after being shut down, its reluctance towards aggression, or why it befriends birds and random wildlife. Physical diagnostics are all fine despite its age, but in short, we have no idea why it is the way it is.”  
  
“Have you tried just asking it what it wants there?”  
  
“On multiple occasions. Usually I’ll get a tilted head or a series of tones that don’t seem to mean anything. I’ve asked Zenyatta and our other omnic colleagues for their opinions on the matter, but none of them have anything in their program archives about this location, or any idea as to why such an old mobile defense unit would want to go there. And their questioning their fellow omnic yielded no new results.” Winston leaned back in his chair, folding both his hands and feet and drumming their digits thoughtfully. “I’ll admit I’m baffled.”  
  
She rummaged about in her bag, pulling out her tablet and setting it on the table between them. With a few quick motions of her fingertips, she pulled up a view of the area once more. Just like before, it was a featureless sea of white, gray, and green, no different from any tract of the northern forests that stretched for miles upon miles across the Canadian wilderness. She couldn’t see anything suspicious at all no matter how she looked at it, not even a lewdly shaped boulder for Junkrat to pick out and giggle at later. There was nothing but trees, rocks, and snow. “I don’t suppose you have any different satellites that might have picked up anything?”  
  
“I was actually hoping you might notice something I didn’t,” he admitted. “I would wait for the weather to clear up and send in a few search drones but after looking into the matter a little more…this is something of a developing emergency.” The screen flashed, and pictures began opening one after the other, staying on screen for only a few moments before another replaced it. For several long moments it continued, and he watched as the climatologist’s expression became more and more grim. “Those are all missing persons reports from the last thirty-odd years, from the various towns nearest the location, hundreds of miles away. I’m sure you notice the connection.”  
  
She continued watching the pictures scroll past; serial numbers and figures with metal features, some with ocular lights, some without, mostly humanoid shaped, others not resembling humans at all, but all with the ‘ _MISSING_ ’ text stamped across them. With a strange little noise that wasn’t quite a sigh, she breathed out, steepling her fingers in front of her as the number of victims grew. “…They’re all omnics.”  
  
The gorilla nodded his shaggy head slowly. “All omnics, for over thirty years. I looked into the ongoing investigations but their only guesses were an anti-omnic terrorist still at large, or some form of virus, though that seems unlikely. Local law enforcement seems to know even less than we do…And with our Bastion unit seeming to have a connection to this, and its location being in the frozen north, it seemed almost eerily well-tailored for our new science team’s first official mission. I’m sending you both there on a scouting assignment to find whatever is at this location and report back when and if you find anything. I’ve already put in the orders for your supplies and cleared your schedules. You’ll move out tomorrow.”  
  
To his surprise, Mei only smiled at his abrupt orders, cheeks dimpling happily. “Oh, this is going to be so exciting!” She blinked, then coughed a little. “I mean…Not the missing omnics, that’s horrible. But our first science team mission together! I’m certain we can be of help. Are you going to be coming along?”  
  
“Er…I would like to, honestly I would. But Comman- ahem, Soldier 76 is insistent that Talon is planning something with how quiet it’s been lately, and Ana agrees with him. I need to remain here and continue overseeing our teams from the command central, including yours and Bastion’s new mission. In fact, I’d better get back to that. I’ll send the rest of the details to you by the end of the day. Once you reach the target location, I want you to contact us immediately with whatever you find, and then we’ll field more agents if needed. So…” He grinned, revealing a jaw full of large pointed teeth, “Get moving, Agent Zhou. Go get ready to uh, what is it you say? Science the heck out of things?”  
  
She nodded quickly, even offering a comical little salute to her ape friend, before darting in to give him a very brief little hug on one arm. “I’m sorry you can’t come with us, but I’ll look around and see if we can find anything. Maybe Bastion will have more to offer once we’re on-site, too? I still wonder what it wants there?”  
  
A hand that was easily the size of her entire torso very gently patted her back before nudging her gently towards the door. “Time for your science team to find out. Go check over your equipment and I’ll send you time of departure for tomorrow.”  
  
And with that, he turned back to his screen and Mei hurried from the control room to let him return to his duties. When the door was closed, she pumped both gloved fists and hissed a low “Yes!” before breaking into a run towards her dorms, pulling out her tablet and already pulling up her charts and maps. She felt strangely elated, and then also a little guilty about being so elated. She shouldn’t feel happy at all with the ongoing tragedy of so many missing omnics, which may or may not have had ties to this mysterious wilderness locale, or that the once-trusted Bastion unit might be holding secrets from them…but she was going out! She was going out on an actual science mission, specifically for the science team, and one that seemed to have true importance. Winston was giving the science division actual work. No more babysitting the backlines or watching weather reports, this sounded like her team could really do some good if they could make any headway into this mystery, something important, something that might-  
  
She turned a corner, still running, and slammed face-first into a solid wall of massive muscle and fat. With a squeaking noise of startled pain, she bounced back and landed hard on her rear on the floor. Roadhog seemed equally as startled, masked head tilting down at her before slowly offering out one enormous gloved hand.  
  
“Mei! What the hell, Roadie, you’ve caused a bingle again! What’d I tell you about blind corners, mate?” Junkrat appeared behind his larger partner, lifting up one of his arms to get past him before hobbling behind the stunned Mei, lifting her up to her feet and going to wipe at a droplet of blood just below her nose. His attempts ended up scrubbing soot above her lip and giving her a black mustache-looking mark, so he licked his filthy thumb with a slurping noise of his long tongue and went to try and clean it away yet again. “Aw, love, lemme get that for ya!”  
  
She managed to come to her senses just before his thumb touched her, pushing the sticky saliva-covered appendage away just in time, wiping the black mark away on her own. She rubbed at her nose, seeming satisfied that at least it wasn’t broken. It would hardly do to start off a mission with a broken nose, especially in such a silly way. “Sorry! Sorry about that. Are you okay, Roadhog?”  
  
Roadhog hesitated, then looked down at himself as if to inspect for any damage where the much tinier woman had bounced right off him. After a long moment he rumbled a low, “…Mm.”  
  
With an almost suspicious tilt of his head, the tips of his singed hair still burning from an apparent practice session on the fields, Junkrat squinted down at her, leaning down to her level to inspect her once more. “We were just looking for you. What’s the trouble, babe? Not much like you, runnin’ through the halls like your arse is on fire. I mean, usually it’s _my_ arse what’s on fire, but what’s got you dashing?”  
  
“I’m so sorry about that, I should have been more careful. I was just in such a hurry because I have to get ready! Winston’s sending us out on a mission tomorrow and I’ve got a lot to do. Oh, this is so exciting! I’d better get back to it, so-” She gave a quick, polite little bow of her head and then went to edge past Roadhog’s wide form, as the huge junker turned sideways to allow her past him. Squeezing through them both, she slowed her pace to less of a run and more of a jog. But when she heard footsteps behind her, she glanced back. The junkers were following her down the hall.  
  
“Oh, the big monkey finally got you a mission of your own? I know you’d been wanting one. That’s ace, good on ya. Who’s going? Where you headed?” Junkrat loped after her, peg leg clacking noisily as his huge bodyguard’s boots thudded just behind him.  
  
The question made her pause, giving time for the lanky young man to catch up with her and snake his long arms around her from behind, pulling her against his bare chest with a grin. Winston had told her to keep quiet about Bastion’s involvement or whatever this mission might have been. Trying to keep her voice casual and as non-suspicious as possible, she pretended to dig around for her tablet. “Oh! It’s…just a mission for the science team. It might not even be anything. Another agent and I are going to be flying out tomorrow to looking into a few strange things happening in Canada. It could be very boring, actually. That’s all. I mean, nothing really.” She gave a little nod, trying to make herself stop before it qualified as rambling. That should be a satisfactory answer, nothing was technically a lie.  
  
There was a little answering giggle from his throat just above her, and his grip subtly tightened around her frame. When he spoke, Junkrat’s voice was just a little too soft, indicating he was already onto her. Damn. “Oh! Well, that’s a real shame, ain’t it? I mean, the monkey calling you in for an emergency meeting about a mission for your science team there, and it’s nothing at all? That’s downright rotten of him. Sooo, Canada, huh…Remind me who ya said you were heading out with?”  
  
She winced inwardly. “It’s…just Bastion and me.”  
  
Her words had just about the exact effect she’d been dreading, and he pulled his arms abruptly from around her as she turned to face him. His yellow eyes were wide and dangerously ablaze, and his nostrils flared when he hissed an angry reply. “What! No, no no, what the hell is that about! That hairy fucker better not be even thinking of sending you out alone with just that bot! Oh we are gonna have a chat, we are-”  
  
“Don’t you say that about Winston!” she protested sharply, cutting him off and making him cringe back a bit. “And Bastion is a valued member of the science team and has been a model research assistant out in the field. Winston was going to come along, but he’s not able to so…It’s going to be all right with just the two of us. Like I said, we’re just looking into a few things, then we’ll be back. I know how you feel about…certain topics, but there’s no reason to get worked up.”  
  
“Worked up! This ain’t even half worked up. You think I’m going to let my best girl go waltzing out into who-knows-what, alone with some weird malfunctioning bot and its freaky bird? That’s not even sending you out with a team, that’s just…” He sputtered, waving both arms. “Well that’s just crazy, and I know crazy when I see it!”  
  
Mei sighed, giving an imploring look to Roadhog for some help. To her consternation, he was nodding along with his partner, and shrugged a little at her disappointed look. He shook his masked head, scratching at one side of his giant gut and pulling up his sagging pants with a grunt. “Don’t trust bots,” he said simply.  
  
“Can’t trust ‘em at all, Roadie,” Junkrat agreed, before dropping to one knee and spreading out both long arms in a ta-da sort of display, posing in front of her. “Which is why…you need your favorite bodyguards! Yeah! We’ll protect you! Especially me, I’ll protect that body with my life, you know it. Sign us up, Snowflake. We’re going with you!” He jabbed Roadhog irritably in the side several times with the nearly blade-edge sharp angle of his elbow, before the much larger man grumbled and posed with him, one hand on his hip and the other giving her a thumbs up.  
  
She rolled her eyes briefly, shaking her head at the ridiculous duo. “I appreciate the concern, I really do, but that’s totally unnecessary. This isn’t even a combat mission, it’s scientific recon. We might not find anything there at all, and there’s probably nothing to even protect me from. There’s really no reason for you to feel like you need to come along, I don’t need any bodyguards this time.”  
  
“Well then it sounds like you won’t mind us coming along, if it’s just a pleasure tour and you won’t even need these guns!” Junkrat answered slyly, changing his pose so that he was flexing both skinny arms at her. “If you won’t take us as bodyguards, then we’ll just go along as…uh…scientific observers. Or just take us as your mates, with sparkling, scintillating conversation all for you. Who else are you going to talk to, the omnic only speaks in beep-boops? Come on, we handled everything the Outback had to throw at us, what’s wrong with bringing us with you just in case?”  
  
Mei just gave him an exasperated look. “It’s just a scouting expedition! And you’d hate it in Canada!”  
  
This was not something she’d expected to happen, and it had lessened her prior emotional high about getting her team’s first official orders. She should have simply given Junkrat a kiss goodbye before being on her way, without him ever knowing she was out on a mission with a bot. But then again…she’d been meaning to subtly try shifting the junkers’ stance on their omnic teammates. Not that she expected them to ever forgive or forget after everything she’d witnessed in the Outback, but if she could improve relations between her friends to at least a stiff formality instead of rabid hatred, it would be a step up. Plus, as much as she loathed to think of it, Bastion’s mysterious behaviors might warrant someone else coming along to keep an eye on things, or if anything related to the missing omnics popped up, or if something unlucky happened…and with her, something unlucky always happened. As insane as it sounded, it was starting to sound like an opportunity for both a better chance of understanding, and a pair of strong allies was always nice to have, just in case.  
  
Well that and…having Junkrat around to keep her warm on a cold night wasn’t something to be _entirely_ ignored, in a very unprofessional way…  
  
“Well we can come along in an unofficial capacity, eh? Oh, I get it, this is about it being an expense thing? Money’s no object when it comes to you, lovey. How about we do this as a favor to you, pro bono? Hehehe, and then you and me, we can uh, we can pro- _bone_ -o? Eeeeeeh?” His grin widened before he parted his teeth just enough to wiggle his tongue lewdly at her. This time both Mei and Roadhog sighed together, looking in opposite directions from the crude younger junker, who simply looked baffled that his smooth-talking hadn’t worked. “What? You get it?”  
  
“I got it. Unfortunately. Listen…if you end up coming along with us- and that’s a big if, I haven’t decided on anything! If you end up coming with us, you’re going to have to accept that Bastion is an official member of my science division and we are going to be working together on this project. That means you’re going to have to be nice to it. No ifs, ands, or buts. If you can’t agree to being civil to your omnic teammates, I’ll have to decline you both. Can you be nice to it?”  
  
Roadhog hummed unsurely through his mask’s filters, and Junkrat scowled as his expression twisted up to one side in a derisive sneer. “Define ‘nice’ when it comes to a bot? It’s not like it’s got feelings.”  
  
Well, he was being extremely rude about it, but the fact that he was even asking meant he might be considering it. She held up a finger to his lips abruptly. “Bastion does have feelings, and I have rules about those feelings. It means being nice, and I know you know how to be nice. No blowing it up, no cursing at it, no insulting it, no trying to eat its bird, no doing anything mean. If you have to ask about it, it’s probably not nice. Before anything, I need a yes or a no. And if you say yes, I’m going to hold you to it in both a professional and personal way.” She placed both hands on her hips sternly. “That goes for both of you. So think it over before you say anything. I am not budging on this one.”  
  
“Well damn, darl, tell us how you really feel,” Junkrat grumbled, scratching at his singed hair. He seemed to be mulling it over, exchanging several glances with Roadhog in their strange, often silent or one-sided communication that she still couldn’t always understand. “Arright, arright, we both promise we won’t hurt the bot.”  
  
“Orrr?” she prompted.  
  
“Or the bird. But if that thing goes berserk-”  
  
“It won’t. It’s our friend,” she said, perhaps a little more firmly than she should have.  
  
He lifted a bushy brow. “…Yeah, whatever you say, love. Look, promise you in a real official capacity that we won’t do any misbehaving unless we really need to. I’ll sign a contract if I gotta, even. But we’re with ya!”  
  
Roadhog nodded above them with a low, “Mm.”  
  
“I’m going to hold you to that, Jamison. You promised me. And you too, Roadhog. No joking. I’ll check things over with Winston and get everything ready. So, you two should go see to everything you want to bring with you. Now, sorry to run, but we’ve got a lot to do before tomorrow morning! _Yídòng gèng kuài_! Hurry hurry!” She left the junkers in the hallway and broke into another hurried gait, her head down and already tapping at her tablet and forgetting that she had already run into someone once today, doing that exact same thing.  
  
From behind her, she heard a bewildered Junkrat wonder aloud, “Wait a minute, mate…Ain’t Canada really _cold?_ ”  



	2. Chapter 2

She’d been so excited that she had shown up at the launch bay four hours before the ship was supposed to leave the next morning. Everything looked to be ready, she had checked and re-checked all their gear several times over, and probably checked on their food rations every time she had passed by their box, just to be ultra sure. To her relief, they were not the kind that they had sent her off with before, the kind that tasted like they had been at the bottom of some bargain bin for a few centuries too long. Winston’s new stipend had bought them all good food and good supplies, and she made a note to thank him later. He had even provided a book about northern wilderness survival, though she had a feeling that was for the junkers. He also hadn’t even seemed surprised by her wish to include them in her mission, and had made an effort to be polite about the matter when she presented him the paperwork to bring them along…True, he had that little hitch in his voice the entire time he subtly tried to suggest bringing Pharah or McCree or literally anyone else instead of them, but she had been firm. She was going to make this mission work, and improve junker/omnic relations at the same time.  
  
Or at the very least, she hoped they’d want to kill each other a little less…  
  
She sat on the edge of the launch pad wall, eating a piece of toast and jam and enjoying the morning as Snowball sat beside her, its screen showing a series of dots as it ran a few last-minute diagnostics. The sun rose slowly, dawning cool and clear and bathing the Gibraltar sky with pink and yellow, dotted with fluffy orange clouds. She had even managed to wake up before the local seagulls and there was blissful silence save for the faint crashing of far-off waves against the rocky cliffs, and the crunch of toasted bread between her teeth. Best to enjoy the silence and calm while it lasted, she knew. Even an entire flock of gulls couldn’t compare to the shrill screeching laughter of Junkrat when he got started, and he brought chaos with him wherever he went. The junkers would have to be monitored carefully, all the while trying to also monitor Bastion and its strange behavior, and she had to be prepared to break up any fights and try to smooth things over to begin the healing process... This morning would likely be the only reprieve she would have for the next several days and she needed to enjoy it while she could.  
  
The last bite of toast and gooseberry jam left a few crumbs that she brushed from her lap, and there was a soft tweeting trill and a flash of Ganymede’s familiar yellow feathers as the Eichenwalde cardinal fluttered about her in a little circle, landing by her feet and pecking at a few specks of bread before tilting its head up at her. With a few hops, it launched up onto her foot, then her knee, and then onto the wall beside her, tapping its beak curiously at Snowball’s animated screen. The little cryo-drone startled itself awake, emoticon eyes blinking before offering the bird a ^ ^.  
  
Mei smiled, clasping both hands over her chest at the sight. “Aww! Good morning, Ganymede. I guess if you’re here, Bastion isn’t too far behind. Are you both ready to go?”  
  
Ganymede offered no reply besides another tilt of its head, ruffling its feathers before fluttering off once more. Sure enough, the loud clanking of the Bastion unit was audible now and steadily moving closer. Rounding the corner, it tucked its gun behind its back and made a rather shy little wave with its hand as its avian companion hopped in circles atop its head. “ _Doo-da-da._ ”  
  
“ _Ni hao_ , Bastion! Good morning to you too. Are you excited for our first trip?” She asked, pulling herself off the stoop to approach the bot.  
  
“ _Wee!_ ” It beeped in the affirmative, then looked past Mei and offered Snowball another wave, mechanical fingers clicking as it wiggled them. Snowball uttered a little warbling noise as it hovered up to join them both, floating just over Mei’s shoulder before it gave the Bastion unit a happy face and a scrolling screen of marquee hearts. Bastion looked a little taken aback, scratching at its chin as its eye turned half red in the middle. Was it…blushing? “ _Deeeeee-doo-doo-deeeeee._ ”  
  
Mei was just about ready to set off the emergency alarms and summon the entire base over to see this display of nonstop adorableness, but she made herself take a breath, smoothing her hands over the front of her coat before taking Snowball in both arms. “Now Bastion, I did ask you to come a little early because I wanted to just go over a few things with you, is that okay?” She received a nod and continued, “Okay, good. I know you received my message about the junkers joining us and I just wanted to be certain how you felt about things before we leave.”  
  
Bastion looked down to the ground, uttering a grinding noise that went down at the end. It didn’t sound very sure at all.  
  
“I know that they’re a handful and how they’ve acted towards you and the others. But they’ve been making a lot of progress in other areas, and I think that with a little more work, we might be able to help them see that you and Zenyatta and the rest don’t have anything to do with what happened in Australia and that they can start to let go of those prejudices, right?” With a hopeful nod, she placed a gloved hand on one of the gears of its boxy shoulder. “And you’re the friendliest, cutest bot I’ve ever met. I think in no time at all they’re going to like you too! I’ve made them promise not to do anything mean to you or Ganymede, so we just have to be…um, diplomatic. And I want you to know that if they give you any trouble at all, you should come to me at once. But I know we can do this together, and get our mission done successfully. Speaking of…”  
  
She opened her tablet, the holographic display flickering to life over it. Sure enough, Bastion’s interest peaked immediately, stepping forward and searching the map for a moment before bringing its pointer finger towards the little block of northwest Canada. It uttered a questioning chirp, turning towards Mei once more and tapping it twice. “ _Dee-Bwoo-woo?_ ”  
  
“Maybe you can tell me why you’re so interested in this place? You’re my friend, Bastion, and I want you to know that you can tell me anything. What’s in this forest? Why are we going there?” Her brows knitted in concern, biting slightly at her lower lip. The bot paused, then uttered a series of tones that went up and down, staring at the spot on the map and tapping it again before looking at her expectantly. No new information to be had there, but she offered it a little wary smile and adjusted her glasses. “Okay, well…I’m sure we’ll find out once we get there, and then maybe you can tell me? I mean, tell _us_?”  
  
There was a sudden commotion approaching them from the other side of the base, and they all knew at once who it was.  
  
“Nan, I’m telling ya! I already got everything, we both do!” Junkrat’s familiar high-pitched whine sounded from the corner. “I’ve got at least fifty pounds of gear for this gig, I don’t need any more. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as ‘long underwear’, did you Roadie? The hell is that all about? Not enough to just constrain this magnificent Australian donger with regular underwear, now I gotta wrap my entire self in it?”  
  
Mei sighed, shaking her head. The two junkers entered the docking area, flanked the much smaller figure of Ana, who was fussing over the young man relentlessly, holding a backpack and a sack lunch as she struggled to to reach his head and place a knit snowflake-patterned toboggan atop it. She didn’t seem put off by his crude manners at all, hurrying to keep stride with his limping gait. “And you may be putting up a ruckus now, but you’re going to be glad for all this once you actually get there. My ex-husband is from Canada and I know exactly what the two of you are up against-”  
  
Junkrat screeched to a halt, whirling upon her. “ _Ex_ -husband?! What’d he do to you, Nan? You want me and Roadie to _deal_ with him while we’re there?”  
  
Roadhog rumbled and punched one gigantic spiked fist into his palm menacingly.  
  
Ana rolled her remaining eye, shoving the backpack and lunch into Junkrat’s arms. “Jamison, that is Fareeha’s father you are speaking about, you would not be doing anything even if you were anywhere near him. I don’t know why they’re sending you all into a little town like Tentpeg, but it’s going to be cold. Colder than you know. So I packed you a few extra things.” She began rummaging about in yet another bag she pulled from out of her coat. “Extra mittens for if you lose the other two pairs, a scarf or three, some warm socks so you don’t lose that other foot, vitamins, hot cocoa packets, a sweater…Sorry for the tacky sweater, it was the only one I had that might fit you.”  
  
Junkrat wrinkled his nose as she pulled out the sweater, giving it an unimpressed look. “The hell is that thing, a cow? Eh, least it looks less bulky than that coat y’got me.”  
  
“That’s a moose. And the sweater goes _under_ the coat.”  
  
“The fuck it does!?” He blurted out, before his bushy brows lifted suddenly and he clamped both hands over his mouth as Ana began rapidly admonishing him for his language.  
  
Mei coughed a little, turning away to stifle her laugh. She had also been wondering how her Australian cohorts were going to handle a Canadian winter. Roadhog, at least, seemed to be handling the concept a bit better. He was already wearing a powder pink knit hat with a pig face and ears, atop his already pig-themed mask. The now double-headed Hog accepted his own winter bag with little more than a low grumble, even when Ana began wrapping at least a mile’s worth of striped scarf around his thick neck. Mei swiftly came to their rescue, bustling over to try and shoo the concerned sniper off them.  
  
“Miss Amari, I’m sure they’ll be all right. I have everything checked over, even extra thermal blankets and toothbrushes just in case,” Mei said, before leaning up to the woman’s ear. “And I’ll send you pictures of them all dressed up in the snow, if you want. I plan to take a lot!”  
  
Ana offered her a wrinkled grin, her eye creasing with amusement at the thought. “I thought you’d never offer, habibati. Honestly, I’d offer to go with you if I wasn’t busy here. To keep a watch on those two, mainly. But, I suppose they’re even better off with the best cold weather expert we have. But you’re going to have your hands full with two junkers and an omnic, you know.”  
  
“I know,” Mei sighed, deflating slightly before straightening up with a little huff. They both turned to eye the men, watching as Junkrat tried to convince his partner to trade hats and was swiftly rebuffed. “But if I can deal with those two out in the desert, I’m sure I can deal with them out in the snow. If they get too hot under the collar, I can send them to chill out! This time they’re going to be on my turf, right?”  
  
“That’s the spirit, my tough girl.” Ana clapped her gently on her shoulder and turned to go, before halting abruptly. “ _Ya lahwy_! I almost forgot!” She dug around in the mysterious depths of her coat yet again before withdrawing one more knitted hat, a pale yellow with a pom-pom on top and a buttoned strap, before going to latch it onto Bastion’s boxy head. “I wouldn’t want you to feel left out, hm?”  
`  
The bot touched it reverently, beeping its thanks.  
  
“All right, I’ll get out of your hair so you can get on your way. Good luck in Tentpeg, be safe out there! Be good! And warm! Stay warm!” With a last wave, the old sniper rounded the bend and vanished.  
  
Junkrat, still wearing his new toboggan despite having no shirt on, lurched up beside Mei and stretched upright, placing his hands on his hips to watch her go. “Best nan I never had, ain’t she? Top ratings. If only she didn’t make the cookies with raisins in ‘em…”  
  
Roadhog hefted a crate of their supplies in one arm, lumbering up the ramp to the ship with a low rumble.  
  
“Well I know you like the raisin kind, mate, don’t got to rip my head off about it,” Junkrat snapped. “But yeah, you’re right, let’s get moving. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can get the hell out. Don’t much fancy the thought of all that snow. You’re real lucky I’m the gallant gent that I am, lovey, braving the ice and gales like I am, all in the name of love! That right there, that’s romance, that is.”  
  
“You’re the one who insisted on coming,” she reminded him with a little sly look. “But this is a lot more snow than the places you’ve been sent so far. Romance or not, I don’t want any of you to hesitate to ask for help if you’re having trouble.”  
  
“Eh, she’ll be right! Not to worry!”  
  
“I mean it, Jamie. I know you’re better at handling the heat than I am, but I lived in Antarctica. It takes a while to get used to the ice and snow. And the cold…Sometimes, the cold can…” Her voice trailed off, expression going slack as her gaze went far away.  
  
 _Mist on her breath…Ice crystals on her eyelashes…the last green dots of a dying battery…a collection of mugs standing like gravestones…nobody even knew they were th-_  
  
“Oi!” A gravely voice sounded in her ear and then came the familiar nip of sharp teeth against her ear, jolting her from her reverie. “Come on, Mei, come on back.”  
  
“Sorry! Sorry, sorry about that, was just thinking again,” she said, shaking her head to clear away the negative thoughts, the little things that always seemed to get caught in the cobwebs in the recesses of her brain. When Junkrat merely squinted at her in some concern, she quickly leaned up to nuzzle her nose against the side of his jaw. “I’m fine, don’t worry. And I’ll be there if you need help with the cold…” She looked around quickly to make sure nobody was in earshot, leaning up again and pretending to adjust his silly toboggan. “I know lots of ways to help keep you warm, I mean?”  
  
Steam practically shot out of the man’s ears and she could have sworn his grin widened enough that the edges of his mouth were meeting on the back of his head, barking out a sharp “YEAH!” before lowering his voice back to…well, his usual customary loudness. “Yeah, show me lots of that! Survival techniques! Sexy, sexy survival techniques! Come on, come on, we better get a move on!” He grabbed her hand and started dragging her up the ramp to the ship, eager to get the trip started, ice and snow be damned.  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Junkrat seemed a little less sure of things a few hours later, with his face pressed to their ship’s window, staring down at the vast landscape of green and white forests below them. He’d begrudgingly put on his moose sweater, though it hung silly and loose on his bony frame, and Mei had even caught him giving a few doubtful glances towards the bulky winter coat sticking out of his pack as the temperature outside continued to drop the further north they went. “Turn the heat up already, will ya? I can feel it in my toes, you want me to lose my foot? You wanna answer to Nan’s wrath when she learns you didn’t keep poor ol’ Junkrat from freezing to death like you promised?”  
  
“No, it’s better to get a little acclimated to the cold slowly. And it’s barely even a chill, you’ll be all right.” Mei smacked his hand gently away from the temperature controls, her eyes still on the ship’s onboard map as they neared the tiny dot on the map that represented the town of Tentpeg.  
  
The trip had been mercifully quiet and without trouble thus far. Bastion had gone idle almost immediately, and though the junkers had watched it distrustfully at first, eventually they had grown bored and left it to its own devices. For now, Roadhog was snoring softly in his seat in the back, already snug in his winter coat and pig hat, while Bastion sat in a resting posture with its legs drawn up and its boxy body lowered to the ground, only its flickering eyelight hinting that it was alive at all. Mei barely seemed to notice the cold at all, checking the autopilot as she glanced over their schedules again. “We should be arriving in Tentpeg in just a few minutes, everyone. Landing at 5:25 PM. -6 Celsius, so not too bad so far. We can check into our hotel and then erm…have a quick look around the next morning, before we need to head out.”  
  
Junkrat’s eyes bulged slightly when she mentioned the temperature, finally relenting and scrambling to grab his parka, awkwardly shoving both arms into it before fumbling with his mittens. “-6 she says, and ‘that’s not bad’? I’ll be a Junksicle in seconds.” He paused, then turned to Mei with an all-too-familiar edge to his grin. “Oi Mei, if I was a Junksicle, would you lick m-”  
  
“ _Ānjìng!_ Shh!” She tossed a scarf into his face, interrupting him and leaving him to unwind it as she focused on the manual controls. The ship was starting to approach a crude landing area- Really more of a clearing outside of town than an actual landing area- as the snow fell steadily outside, blowing gently against the windshield. The town below was barely that. She had read that Tentpeg had been established for logging, ages ago, and had always been a tiny and rather destitute place. There had been attempts to rebrand it into a tourist destination, but it was further north than tourists really wanted to go. Now the only things left here were a few scattered service buildings and houses, and the hotel they would be staying at while she looked into things.  
  
The ship wavered slightly as she set it down, turning around in her seat. “Okay, everyone! We’re here!”  
  
The others began stirring. Coats were put on, seatbelts clicked, and bags were gathered, before they all stood at the cargo doors. Mei clicked the button, and with a whir, they slowly opened. The cold creeped in as soon as the seal breached, little flakes of white and blue swirling around their feet. The little climatologist stood at the front, bearing the brunt of it as Snowball hovered beside her. Her companions did not face it quite as bravely. Ganymede fluffed up and retreated underneath Bastion’s hat, squirming under the rim for relative shelter, and even the stalwart Roadhog, larger than ever with his layers of coats and gear, took a half step backward. Junkrat squealed and hid behind his bodyguard as though he would shield him from this like he had shielded him from everything else. But the cold had already swept in, and any warmth left in the ship was smothered and gone within seconds.  
  
Mei, already rose-cheeked and smiling comfortingly, gestured them forward. “I know it’s a little chilly at first, but you’ll acclimate. Why don’t we all get to the hotel and get warm and settle in, and we’ll all have dinner and celebrate your first cold weather mission. Go science division…and friends! Hooray, us!”  
  
Junkrat, already huddling miserably into his coat and scarf with barely his eyes peeking out in a little strip just above, scrambled forward. “Are you trying to bloody kill us, woman?! Standing around in the cold? This ain’t natural! Which way’s that hotel? Can’t believe I ever agreed to- _WAAAUUGH!_ ”  
  
He rushed past her, sights set on the buildings up ahead, and stepped off the ramp. His weight hit the top of the smooth white and he immediately sank in up past his knees, toppling forward as he tried to brace himself before falling. He vanished from sight into the snowbank, leaving behind a distinctly Junkrat-shaped impression like some warped version of a snow angel.  
  
The rest of them stood watching, Bastion tilting its head as Roadhog snorted a low, “Idiot.”  
  
From the safety of the ramp there was a flash, as Mei grinned and took a picture.


	3. Chapter 3

Mei knew how to move swiftly over the ice. She had, after all, traversed miles of Antarctica on foot whilst dragging the only supplies she had left in the world. She knew how to disperse her weight, how to walk with skis and snowshoes, and the subtle tactile differences between a packed snowbank and weak slush. Bastion had cleverly switched out its feet for its tank treads, and dutifully trailed after her, whirring and clanking. The junkers were having a bit more trouble, just as she had predicted. Roadhog was simply a heavy man, and no matter where he stepped, he sank down until he was practically wading waist-deep as he struggled forward. Junkrat did more complaining than anything, walking behind Hog in the trenches that his bodyguard’s wide form made in the snow.  
  
“You’re doing great, Mr. Roadhog!” Mei tried at her usual cheerful encouragement, though she was never really sure if it had any effect on the usually silent pig-masked man. She walked just in front of him, guiding him towards the more relatively cleared streets of the town just up ahead. “Just try taking smaller steps, keep your feet flat. I know it’s not like walking over sand, but you’re almost there! See? We’re almost to the streets. There’s the post office, I think that’s a diner, and…oh?…”  
  
Roadhog stopped to catch his breath, wheezing noisily and nearly bending double as Junkrat popped up like a prairie dog behind him. “What’s oh?”  
  
Her glasses were starting to fog a bit, wiping them quickly before reaching into her coat and pulling out a brochure. “Well I thought that was the Tentpeg Inn. But…Wait, is it?” She unfurled the pamphlet, ignoring the little white flakes landing on the paper as she glanced it over. The brochure showed a charming northern lodge, brightly lit up yellow and orange on the blue of the snow in an artfully done photo. There were pictures of moose heads over roaring fires, a group of people laughing and holding steaming mugs, and photos of large beds piled high with cozy quilts and fluffy pillows. “Tentpeg Inn,” she read aloud. “Escape to a slice of heaven. Resort lodging for winter lovers and outdoor enthusiasts everywhere…”  
  
When she looked up again, the building up ahead actually did resemble the inn from the photos…if it had been aged or possibly abandoned for the last twenty or so years. The main lodge looked weather-beaten and run down, with peeling paint, several boarded windows, and a hanging sign with the chain broken on one side, twisting and squeaking in the wind. Most of the cabins from the photos were gone, and one looked to have recently burned down, standing as a blackened and charred wooden skeleton amidst the white, while the others were nearly as dilapidated as the main inn itself. The only signs of life were a lit up ‘ **VACANCIES AVAILABLE** ’ sign in the window.  
  
Junkrat burst into giggles. “Resort lodging? What a dump! Reminds me a bit of home, actually.” He shivered unhappily as another breeze whipped past them, hugging himself in both arms. “The dump’s fine. Sure, whatever, can we just get inside!”  
  
The main roads of the town were a little easier to traverse, a few plow drones zooming past them and paying them no mind even when Snowball tried to beep a hello. The handful of people she saw, huddled into their coats and their heads down, also paid them no mind. It seemed that the weather had managed to best that famous Canadian politeness she’d heard so much about, and there was barely even a glance their way as they traveled up the squeaking snow-buried steps of the Tentpeg Inn, as Junkrat was possessed by a sudden rush of adrenaline and darted past them all once more, slamming open the doors and hurrying inside.  
  
The inside was about as well-maintained as the outside. The wallpaper was peeling and there were cobwebs up in the wooden beams. The roaring hearth turned out to merely be a shoddy hologram of a fire set in front of a basic heating unit, and while the moose head from the pictures was there, it was covered in dust. The couches in the lounge were stained and lumpy, in one corner was a bucket nearly full of water from a leak in the roof, and there was nobody at the front desk. But at least it was warmer inside, and the junkers sighed audibly in relief as they stamped snow from the boots, and Bastion made an attempt to run its treads back and forth over the welcome mat as Ganymede peeked out from under its hat. Junkrat grumbled under his breath about the weather before brightening at the sight of the service bell on the empty countertop, and before Mei could think to stop him, he went and slammed his palm down on it several times.  
  
 _Ding! Ding! DingdingdingdingdingDINGDINGDINGDING!_  
  
“Ghrmm!” Roadhog reached out and snatched Rat’s arm away, giving him a stern shake.  
  
“Yeah, coming!” A voice sounded from the little office behind the front desk, and a young man who couldn’t have been any older than Junkrat and was nearly as scrawny appeared in the open doorway, not looking particularly thrilled to see them. He did wear an official bellhop uniform, which Mei thought looked even sillier compared to the squalor all around them. He snapped his gum in a rather obnoxious manner before sidling up to the computer behind the counter. “You must be the appointment at 6:00? You’re late.”  
  
Roadhog stared the attendant down through the blank lenses of his pig mask, his huge hand still gripping his younger partner’s arm. With a snorting wheeze, he responded with a low, “…Barely made it through the rush.”  
  
Mei gave both junkers a little pleading ‘please behave’ look before digging in her  pack, producing her ID. “Only a little bit late. We have the two room suite? It should be registered under Zhou Mei-Ling.”  
  
“Mm-hm.” The attendant didn’t even bother looking at it, typing something into the computer before shuffling through a stack of key cards. Selecting one, he motioned for them to follow him, down the hall and past rows of locked and numbered doors as Roadhog absent-mindedly dragged Junkrat on the floor behind him, still hanging by his arm and for some reason not even seeming to mind. They were lead to their room, and Mei’s heart sank as the door opened. It smelled faintly of mold, and lemon air freshener trying to cover that mold, and there was a single large bed in the center. Crammed in next to the bed were two army cots and a pile of blankets. When the door opened, the hokey fireplace hologram on the far wall sputtered to life, but only served to throw eerie shadows across everything.  
  
Mei turned upon the attendant, hands on her hips. “This can’t be right! I reserved a two room suite!”  
  
The young man shrugged and pulled at his uniform, gesturing to the bedroom, then to the open bathroom door. “One room. Two rooms.”  
  
“What? The bathroom isn’t a room! I have traveled all over the world and this has never been the case!”  
  
“I don’t make the rules, all right? You’re the one who arrived late and lucky to get a room at all. Plus, you didn’t say you’d be bringing pets, the little drone and the bird will have t-” the attendant started to say, before Junkrat rose up suddenly behind him. Mei recognized the look on the junker’s face, saw him starting to unwrap the cloth-bundled package that she knew held his precious frag launcher. The attendant stiffened slightly and froze, his jaw hanging open where he was about to pop his gum.  
  
“Oi,” Junkrat said, leaning down over him. “Where’s all that Canadian hospitality I heard about? That’s not at all how you speak to nice ladies like Mei. Roadie, what is it we do with rude little cunts like this, back in Oz?”  
  
Roadhog uttered a guttural rumble that did not sound friendly.  
  
Mei hurried forward, holding up both hands. “No! No, everyone stop! Both of you stop that! Jamison, put that away right now. You know that’s not how we do things. Okay? This will be…fine. We can make it work, this is fine. I think everyone’s just a little cranky from traveling, why don’t we all just…settle in for the evening?” She kept her eyes on the lanky junker until she was sure he wasn’t going to blow the place up, and the attendant quickly stumbled away from him. Physically grabbing onto the front of his bellhop uniform before he could protest, she herded him quickly away from the others and almost pushed him out the door before shutting it in his face. Slumping against the door with a muffled thud, she frowned at the dreary little room before her. “This is really not how this place was advertised at all…”  
  
Junkrat shrugged, scratching at his chin. “Well, let’s just open up the one next door?”   
  
He gestured to the wall and Mei noticed that there was a door where the room had once been joined with the one next to it. So it had been a two-room suite at one point. Still, she protested half-heartedly. “We can’t just go around vandalizing the place. Or threatening to blow up bellhops! Even if he was _really rude_ and I _probably_ should have said something…We still have a no explosions rule in effect and I’m not jeopardizing the science division so soon. We’re here for a nice, peaceful recon mission.” Her eyes darted slightly to the side and she coughed a little, taking off her glasses and wiping them on her shirt. “Still, I did pay for two rooms. Maybe we can just _check_ next door, very quietly?”  
  
“Ugh, I’ll never get you lot and your obsession with ‘doing things quietly’. If something’s worth doing, it’s worth exploding, I always say. Arright, Roadie, get the door. Quuuiiiieeettllyyy,” he emphasized, with an overexaggerated holding up one metal finger by his shushing lips. “Sssshhh.”  
  
Roadhog moved to the little connecting door, wrapping one huge fist around the knob. With a single wrench to the side, the locking mechanism (and the whole doorknob itself) shattered. Swinging it open, the group was hit with the smell of rotten wood, mold, and a blast of cold air and white flakes. The other room was no longer really a room, with an enormous hole in the wall that exposed it to the elements, and the ragged furniture was covered in a sheet of ice and snow. Roadhog pulled the door shut firmly with a slam, then shoved a chair up under the broken doorknob, turning to look down at Mei and shrug. “…I can sleep on the floor.”  
  
“What is wrong with this place! Nobody’s sleeping on the floor!” Mei said firmly. “Oh um…except you, Bastion. Unless you want a cot too?”  
  
“ _Doot-doot,_ ” the omnic replied, shaking its head.  
  
“Roadhog can take the bed, Jamie and I will take the cots.”   
  
“How am I supposed to root you silly on a cot?” Junkrat scowled, ignoring her sudden and very pointed look at the question. “S’not going to be very comfortable for either of us. And with all of us stuck in one room. I mean, I know you don’t care, Roadie, but I’m not gonna do it with the bots watching us, probably recording us with their secret spy cameras!”  
  
Bastion shook its head again, eyelight going a little angry. “ _Dee-dee-woot! Bweep beep?!_ ”  
  
Snowball’s emoticon eyes darted from side to side, seeming strangely nervous before hiding behind one of the bags and not answering the accusation.  
  
Mei closed her eyes for a moment of much-needed serenity, hissing a breath. “Nobody!…Is going to be watching anything. Or doing anything. Or just…anything! Nobody do anything until we head out tomorrow. I’m sure we can survive one night in this place. It’s better than camping outside, even if not by much.” Taking up her bags in both arms, she went to dump them onto the cot furthest from the door, feeling a little sour as she began sorting through her things. “And when I get back I am leaving the most scathing review I can think of. One star! Maybe zero stars! If they allow zero stars!”  
  
“Yeah! Yeah, zero stars! That’s my girl, fight the power!” Junkrat cheered.  
  
Roadhog sighed.  
  
Despite her foul mood at the state of the inn, the night had not been completely unpleasant. She was always surprised at what good company the junkers could provide, even with Junkrat’s hyperactivity confined in such a small space, spinning endless wild tales about their time in exile or their great heists across the world. They had vetoed the idea of the diner if it meant going back out in the cold again, and instead sat eating pre-packaged meals, watching television and sitting in front of the fake fireplace as darkness fell early and the wind howled outside. Junkrat had made several attempts at staking his claim on the only bed in the room, until Roadhog had firmly picked him up and bodily dropped him onto the floor, leaving him to crawl back to his cot while Snowball trilled gleeful laughter at his defeat.  
  
Bastion spent the evening tucked into the corner of the room, its legs drawn up again and looking out the window as Ganymede nested in its hat.  
  
“Dunno how you stand it, love,” Junkrat grumbled, pulling another quilt on top of him as he struggled to get comfortable on the cot, his single foot draping off the end and forcing him to don two pairs of socks for warmth. The metal posts squeaked audible as he twisted and turned, trying to find a position where he could fit on the cot, stay under all the blankets, and also drape his arm over the woman next to him. “Had some unpleasant nights in the Outback, I’ll give you that. But this ice stuff is for the birds. I’d much rather be hot and sweaty than…” He paused, seeing an opening. “Heh, hey Mei, speaking of hot and sweaty, we could always-”  
  
“I knew you were going to say that. Why do you have to turn everything into an innuendo?” groaned the little figure under her own pile of blankets next to him.  
  
“I’m good at it! I’m good at a lot of things; innuendos, blowin’ things up, planning heists, finding things, breathing, shoplifting, eating…”  
  
She fell asleep soon after, with Roadhog’s steady baritone breathing and Junkrat’s mindless soft chatter lulling her to meaningless dreams.  
  
***

* * *

  
  
“Mei!”  
  
Her eyes shot open, her chest tight from the weight of the blankets and the room dark and stifling, the lights from the hologram of the fire never reaching into its shadowed corners. She couldn’t have been asleep for very long, and she wasn’t particularly happy to be woken up so abruptly. Groaning softly, she rolled on the uncomfortable cot hammock, stirring under her covers, voice thick with sleep. “Jamie…I said later…”  
  
“Mei! It’s doin’ something!” A cold metallic finger prodded her in the side and she groggily sat up, staring blearily at the single glowing eyelight of Bastion as it sat in the corner. Hog must have been awake too, as his breathing changed and he rolled a little on the bed to face it as well.  
  
Her eyelids were still crusted with sleep as she watched it blearily, but it didn’t move, and she was about to give Junkrat an earful for waking her up, when the Bastion unit lifted its head and began chiming softly. That wasn’t anything unusual, as it communicated almost entirely through beeps and chirps. But there was something different about it this time, something about the way its eyelight flashed and the series of tones sounded dull and mechanical, unlike its usual cheer. Even in her sleep-fogged mind, she recognized it as the tune it sang whenever it had been asked about the mysterious spot out in the woods.  
  
“What’s it up to, then? Why’s it sound all creepier than normal? Want me to make it shut up?” Junkrat whispered next to her.  
  
She rubbed at her eyes, pulling on her glasses and her yeti slippers as she pushed the blankets aside. “It’s…I’m sure it’s fine. Maybe it’s dreaming? Or something like dreaming?” She didn’t want to admit that the way it was acting really was a bit creepier than normal, the way it made a low grinding noise before the beeping tune started over again. Deciding it was best to be cautious, she lifted her voice to alert it to her presence before trying to touch it. “Bastion! Bastion, wake up!”  
  
It turned its head to her, clearly already awake, and cut its song off mid-beep. “ _Dwoop?_ ”  
  
“Bastion, what’s that song you keep singing? The one you were singing just now? It’s just um…It’s really late, is everything all right?”  
  
Its eye flickered before it turned back to the window and pointed out into the darkness.  
  
Junkrat, clad in his smiley-face boxers and swaddled in several blankets, came up next to her, cupping both hands to peer against the glass and trying to peer through. “Roooiiiight, because that shit’s not creepy at all or anything! Too dark, can’t see nothing out there, anyway. Think there’s some sort of creeper out in the snow or something playing Sing-Along with the bot?”  
  
“Bastion, is something out there?” Mei tried again. “Is some _one_ out there?”  
  
It pointed out the window again.  
  
Frowning, she hurried back to her cot and started pulling on her clothes. “Where are my boots? Snowball, put on your lights and come help me take a look.”  
  
“Hold on a blinkin’ minute, love. It’s creepy and cold out there, don’t want you out with some weird bot-singing wendigo.” Junkrat’s arms encircled her as usual, pulling her to his bare chest and trying to encase her in the blanket cocoon with him. “Or at least give us some time to get the guns ready. Roadie, stop sitting there and do something useful for once, put your stuff on!”  
  
“Hmm…” Roadhog grumbled, rubbing at his mussed white hair as he hefted upright.  
  
“I’m just looking around and Snowball will be with me,” Mei protested, trying to squirm out of his serpent-like grip. As with any squirming prey, his grasp only tightened as she struggled. “You can stay here, I’ll be right back.”  
  
“Oi! Science team safety rule! Never go anywhere alone! That’s the buddy system right there, darl. Try to avoid going out at night unless there’s an emergency, always bring a map. Take only pictures, leave only footprints.”  
  
She paused, staring up at him. “Wait, did you actually read the science safety books I gave you?”  
  
“Nah, I just overheard you say real responsible shit like that all the time. But it’s a dark, frozen hellscape out there and the wind’s blowin’ and it was probably that shitty little bellhop guy or someone anyway. Let’s just check it out in the morning on the way out. Also I uh…I really, really don’t wanna go out in that.”  
  
Mei responded with a frustrated look but stopped struggling inside his blankets, turning to give the windows a worried glance. “I guess it would be safer to wait until we have daylight. Bastion, could you close the curtains until we figure this out in the morning. And I want us taking turns staying awake so someone’s on watch. Just in case.”  
  
The omnic quietly pulled the string as the ragged curtains squeaked shut, and they all retreated back to their respective beds as Junkrat turned on a shopping network channel and volunteered for first watch. And that was how she awoke a few hours later, with the complimentary coffee pot burbling away, the hushed sounds of Roadhog in the shower, and Junkrat shaking her to tell her it was getting light out, covering her face and forehead with relentlessly annoying smack-lipped kisses until she squealed and sat up.  
  
“Got the coffee pot workin’ after a bit of tinkering! Gotta have a cuppa, first thing.” He shoved a mug in her hand, then turned and immediately started drinking straight out of the pot. “Woods are still pretty creepy even when you can see, but it stopped snowing and I don’t see any footprints or anything weird out there. S’just…white? Oh, and your bot’s doing the thing again.”  
  
Bastion’s eyelight flashed and once more it chimed that same tune as it was folding a pile of coats and sweaters, Ganymede hopping back and forth across its shoulders.  
  
“Maybe it thinks it’s a radio? Sometimes bots used to go haywire down in the pits, back in Junkertown? They kind of thrashed around for a bit, just started playing bits of memories or recordings going backwards or just static, ‘til someone came and put ‘em down the rest of the way. Then everyone would cheer and they’d get another one for the fighters to bash around. Until they ran out, anyway. The old bots used to put up more of a fight, new ones ain’t worth bettin’ on,” Junkrat mused, taking another gulp of steaming coffee. “Anyway, if an appliance is giving out, just give it a whack until it works again, or get a new one. Just scrap it and get the dwarf man to make a better one!”  
  
Mei gave him a horrified look. With his jovial personality, sometimes it was easy to forget the sub-civilization conditions the junker really came from. “Don’t say things like that, please. They don’t make ones like it anymore and E-54 isn’t like the other Bastions anyway. You can’t just go get a new one. It’s our friend.”  
  
“You mean it’s your friend. I’m tellin’ ya, darl, you should just-”  
  
Before things could descend into another argument, the door swung open and steam billowed out, sweeping over the both of them. Roadhog’s enormous figure was slowly revealed amongst the mist, wearing nothing but his mask and a set of towels that he had tied together to make one larger towel, which still didn’t quite reach all the way around his wide gut. He stood there for a moment, cutting an intimidating figure despite his limp mane of silver hair and the droplets clinging to his leathery, scarred hide, before announcing calmly, “I broke it.”  
  
“The whole shower is broken? You know, in this place, I’m not even surprised. I don’t thiiiIIIINK-” Her voice rose to a yelp as Roadhog strode across the room and simply let his towel drop to the floor, to start dressing. Mei whirled away from him, shielding her eyes with one hand and her face burning red. “Okay! Ahem. I don’t think anything works in this place and I am not paying for repairs to this dump. Let’s just check out and leave, the sooner the better.”  
  
The bags were swiftly packed and the group of misfits started back down the hallway, leaving a broken mess behind them that for once Mei did not care whether it got fixed or not, so long as they didn’t try to bill her for it. At least the rude bellhop from before wasn’t present, though the older woman who had taken his place didn’t seem much better. She was idly watching television and again, did not pay them much mind beyond a nod and a mumble when they dropped off the key to the front. At least, until Bastion paused while re-stacking the suitcases it was holding, once more chiming that mechanical tune.  
  
Mei saw the woman do a double take, eyes widening very slightly as her attention turned to the robot. “Oh! Oh no…You may want to turn your bot friend off for a while until you get a good distance away from here. Just a suggestion. I don’t know if it works, but it’s worth a shot.”  
  
Bastion tilted its head at her and beeped curiously, and Mei bit her lip with a little squint. “What do you mean? Is something wrong?”  
  
“Well, I’ve been living in this town for near on forty years now. I don’t know if you read up on Tentpeg before you came here, but we’ve always had a rash of omnic disappearances. Us and the nearby towns. Everything from lumber-cutters to waiter service bots, here one day and gone the next. But I think they all started playing that same song that yours just played, just now...” She eyed the robot with a bit more sympathy. “Poor thing.”  
  
Bastion pointed at itself in a ‘Who, me?’ sort of motion before trilling a set of low notes, seeming a little more unsure as it hugged the suitcases to its chest.  
  
Mei’s brows furrowed. “The other missing omnics? They were all playing a song?”  
  
The woman at the counter nodded, leaning on her elbows as she still regarded Bastion with idle interest. “Mm-hm. That exact same little song yours played just now. I can remember hearing it a few times, always that same little tune. They up and start playing that tune and you know it’s the end already. Sometimes they’d find a few tracks leading out into the woods but they never managed to follow any of them very far. And then you just never see them again.”  
  
Bastion blinked its light, looked down and uttered what Mei almost could have sworn was a curse. “ _O-doo-doo._ ”


	4. Chapter 4

“And you didn’t have any clue this was happenin’, eh? Noooo idea that your bot friend was acting suspicious? Seems a bit strange, that does.” Junkrat sat with the seat cranked back, arms folded behind his head and his feet propped up. Despite his slouched posture, he looked the farthest thing from relaxed. “Just poppin’ off to Canada, Junkrat. No reason to worry, Junkrat. I’ll just be on a mystery expedition with this bot that I’m insistin’ real hard is innocent and not at all weird-acting from the start! Tch. You’re real lucky Roadie and I are the sorts of loyal gents that we are, coming along like this. That’s worth at least ten points.”  
  
“I told you I don’t rank you by points!” Mei’s jaw tightened further, her hands white-knuckled around the steering grip of the little ship. “And get your peg leg off the dashboard!”  
  
He scowled at her but pulled his feet away and back onto the floor, even as he hissed back, “How about I put my peg wherever I like it, and you tell me what this mission of yours is actually about? You can’t pretend to be Little Miss Honesty and then not tell us important mission info, that’s puttin’ everything in jeopardy. What’s with the bot, Mei? I’ve seen how you’ve been acting, you know what’s really up?”  
  
“I said I don’t know! Sorry, sorry, I’m not trying to yell, but you’re making it very hard to focus. And I keep telling you, I don’t know why it’s singing that song or anything about what it might have been pointing at. And I already told you the mission parameters, we’re just going to the marked location and taking a look around in person. It just…It just wants us to go there, all right? We’re just checking it out, just in case.”  
  
“So this whole ‘scouting mission’ is just because that whacked-out bot wanted to go walkabout! And you _let_ it!”  
  
Mei took several deep breaths. The snows had stopped but the winds had picked up, and their airship was making slow but steady progress against the face of the gale. They had left Tentpeg to start the long flight northward, into the faceless mass of the Canadian wilderness. The sea of green below was broken only by rocky mountains and lakes and there wasn’t even anything she could try to point out and distract him with. Junkrat had always been high-strung, but he was nigh uncontrollable about omnics, and even she had to admit that none of her attempts at assuaging his doubts seemed very convincing. “It’s not like that! Bastion is our friend and it clearly wants us to find something here, so we’re going to take a look. That’s all. Listen, it’s really not a big deal, so let’s just calm down. We can still do this together.”  
  
“And you can’t tell us why or if it might be leadin’ us right into an omnic trap!” Junkrat twisted in his seat to narrow his eyes at Bastion. “I say we scrap it, for our own sakes.”  
  
“Jamison, no! You promised me you would be nice! Both of you promised you wouldn’t cause trouble about this, and I’m still keeping you to that promise. Bastion is our teammate and…you don’t have to be friends, but you do have to be nice. You. Promised.”  
  
The junker sputtered around his scarf, turning his glare back to her. “Well! Well that’s before I had all the facts, which apparently, you don’t have the facts either. That’s a promise made on shaky pretenses, love. Now me, I’m just trying to keep you safe because I’m a decent bloke, even if you’re putting up a muss and a fuss about it.”  
  
“You’re not trying to keep me safe, you’re just looking for excuses to be _mean_ because you hate omnics!” Her voice rose even though she tried to keep it steady. “And you still promised me, no matter what. You have to keep your promises, you just have to.”  
  
“Arright, Mei! Two can play at your game; look at me and promise me that your bot friend isn’t gonna go haywire. Promise me, Mei, that you can tell me with one-hundred-percent certainty, that your overgrown washin’ machine isn’t leading us into danger. It’s just taking us to the pot of gold at the end of the fuckin’ rainbow and when we open it up, ducklings and kittens are gonna come spilling out and we’re all going to do a dance together because we’re all friends now juuuuust like you wanted.”  
  
“Would you stop being ridiculous? Do you want me to be ridiculous too? Fine! Minus ten points! Minus twenty points!”  
  
“You said we weren’t doing points! Well, aren’t you just Ms. Takesies-Backsies today? You just don’t want to face the music about your robo-pal having interior motives, is that it? Oh, that’s RICH! You know what-”  
  
Bastion all but cowered in the back of the ship’s cargo as the two in the front seat starting shouting again, its head darting between the two as the arguing continued. Snowball sat in its charging station, beeping occasionally when Mei spoke and flashing rude Mandarin phrases across its screen whenever Junkrat answered her. Ganymede seemed unwilling to face their constant bickering, staying unseen under Bastion’s winter hat. Bastion didn’t seem sure of what to do with itself, well aware that it was the subject of the tempest up front. It nervously clicked its fingertips against its gun arm, glancing up when there was a dangerous warning rumble from across the cargo hold. Roadhog, looming so large that he had to bend over inside the ship even when he was sitting down, was still staring at it through the lenses of his pig mask. Glancing from the huge man to its gun arm, Bastion quickly lowered it and held it behind its back before looking back to him. Roadhog did not respond, favorably or otherwise. Bastion’s eyelight darted from side to side again, then it held out its hand as if to shake. Roadhog did not take it.  
  
“Hmmm,” he rumbled once more, before turning his gaze back to the argument that was growing louder in volume by the minute. “…Mei.”  
  
“-And third of all, you can’t break promises just because you feel- WHAT?!” She stopped mid-argue and whirled back to look at him, then quailed at her own voice and quickly lowered it. “I’m sorry! Sorry. Mr. Roadhog. What is it?”  
  
“Are we getting close?”  
  
“Oh!” She seemed almost startled, like she had forgotten that she had been driving in the first place. Blinking, she looked down at the onboard map. “GPS gets a little spotty this far out. Less than fifty miles now. It’s taking a little longer than I would like with this wind and all. We’re flying against it, unfortunately, but there’s nothing for it. Weather system is moving in but we should be in and out before the snows hit.” She turned and looked at Junkrat expectantly.  
  
He sat with his arms folded petulantly and had been staring out the window, lifting a brow back at her. “What?”  
  
“I said, we should be in and out before the snows hit.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I said. We should be. In and out.” She stared at him before muttering in an almost hopeful way, waiting for the lewd remark that was sure to come. “In and out?”  
  
He didn’t even seem to notice her, glaring daggers at the omnic in the back. Mei rubbed her forehead before returning her attentions back to the GPS monitor.  
  
“…I got it,” Hog offered, lifting a hand from the backseat.  
  
She sighed loudly. “Thanks, Mr. Roadhog. Let’s just get there and get this over with. This isn’t really how I’d hoped this would go, but then…things never seem to go well, anyway. We’ll try to find a clearing for a landing, take Bastion to the site and see what’s there, and then we can all head back to a real town and maybe this time get a decent hotel. You two can have your own room and Bastion and Snowball and I can go over our findings so nobody has to be bothered anymore.” She steered the ship against another incoming gale, the whole vehicle shuddering from the force of it as it whistled outside the windows. “Let’s just do our jobs.”  
  
“ _Bee-weep-beep_ ,” Bastion agreed, then quickly shrunk down into a more box-like structure once more when Roadhog looked at it again.  
  
Turning back towards the front, Roadhog glanced between the Mei and Junkrat, who were still trying very hard not to look at one another, but said nothing as he shrugged and sat back once more. With a last grumble, he folded his hands over his massive gut and lowered his head for yet another nap.  
  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Hog snorted awake abruptly some minutes later when a loud beeping noise went off.  
  
Everyone jumped in their seats at the same time, and Mei adjusted her glasses quickly, squinting down at the GPS. “Oh! Is that a weather alert?”  
  
Three small dots, blinking rapidly, were coming up behind them on the map. For a moment, it simply didn’t register to Mei what it meant. They were in the absolute middle of nowhere. It would have been hard to get any more in the middle of nowhere. But there they were, no longer alone, as the three blinking dots started to close in behind them, almost like-  
  
Snowball’s shrill alarm call went off and recognition hit her like a thunderbolt. She gripped onto the little ship’s controls with both hands, roaring a “Everyone hold on!” before abruptly jerking it to one side. The little cargo ship was not meant for evasive maneuvers, but she jammed onto the brakes and pulled up with all her might as it tilted until it was almost horizontal. All the equipment inside that wasn’t strapped down went flying, boxes and debris and Bastion’s heavy metal chassis slamming into the unlucky Roadhog. Junkrat found himself assaulted with trash and food wrappers as he took a water bottle to the face, but he barely noticed, clinging onto the seatbelt that Mei had insisted he wear as several oblong blurs went flying past them outside the window.  
  
“Are those missiles? Are those fuckin’ missiles?!” His gaze widened as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, staring after the vapor trails that had started to curve as they turned back around for another go. “Who the hell!”  
  
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” Mei was still struggling at the helm, righting the vehicle after a moment as she stared in rapt horror down at the blinking red alerts. The little ship was barely above a civilian affair, something that Winston had gotten as little more than a cargo van to hold all her equipment, not anything to be sent into battle. It wasn’t equipped with shields, it wasn’t equipped with missiles, or even a single defensive countermeasure. And it certainly wouldn’t stand up to multiple explosions if they were being attacked. “We’re sitting ducks in this thing!”  
  
Junkrat was already struggling out of his seatbelt, diving into the mess in the back and coming up with his pack. Opening it up, he pulled out several mines, leaping over where Bastion was still trying to right itself. Flinging open one of the back doors and ignoring Mei’s demands for an explanation, his keen gaze followed one of the trails at it headed back towards them. Sticking out his tongue as he often did, concentrating, he narrowed his eyes as he watched its trajectory before rearing back and tossing the mine like a frisbee. It spun on its axis, whirling out into the wind before a quick press of the button detonated the device in an explosion of black and yellow against the gray clouds. The missile sensed the surge of heat nearby and turned right into the fireball, detonating on top of it as a second and far more powerful explosion went off behind them.  
  
“Got one!” He crowed, clinging onto the open door handle as he looked back to Mei for a quick bout of praise.  
  
She was still struggling to maintain control of the ship against the wind, her glasses askew and her expression intense as she aimed their path for the nearby mountains. The other two missiles were still being tracked on her screen, closing in behind them as she heard a series of clanks and whirs. Bastion had finally gotten itself upright, and had quickly shifted into its turret mode as Ganymede was sent fleeing to take shelter behind Snowball’s charger. With a “ _Doot-de-dooooot_!”, it opened fire, the other back door shot off in a hail of bullets and sailing off into the sky as the omnic locked its sights on the targets headed towards them.  
  
Its bullet chains began cranking in rapid machine-gun fire as another cavalcade of ammo was sent spraying towards the incoming missiles. The gunfire caught one, another explosion sending a shockwave through the air that made Junkrat’s grin widen and his bones hum, though he narrowed his gaze at the bot and muttered a hateful little, “Showoff…”  
  
Bastion took aim once more, but the van hit another errant wind gale and shook violently as its shots went wild. The last missile rapidly closed in, spiraling through the air towards them, and one of the bot’s shots finally managed to hit its target. It detonated with another air-rippling boom, but this one had caught their tail end as the van pitched violently once more. Junkrat didn’t even have time to make up a one-liner or an insult, clinging to the remaining door…until it was ripped off its hinges, and both door and junker were wrenched into the open air. He was sucked out into the void, clawing at air as both he and his bag went spinning into the nothingness with an almost comical squeal.  
  
“YAAAWHOOOOOIEEEE!”

  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Roadhog was on his feet before Mei could even finish her horrified scream. The huge junker filled the open back of the van, his arm flinging outward as there was a creaking rustle of chain, his hook spinning out after his airborne partner. It snagged the bottom of his coat, narrowly missing impaling his skinny belly as Junkrat dangled and dragged from the van like a hooked fish; face down, ass skyward, and wide-eyed at the rushing blur of green trees beneath him.  
  
“Pull me up! Pull me up, ya drongo!” The shrieking of the wind drowned out any more words he might have said, flailing his skinny limbs as Roadhog started pulling the chain to reel him in. Hand over hand, he started lifting the younger man back towards safety.  
  
Inside, Mei allowed herself a relieved sigh… Right up until the screen started beeping and flashing red again.  
  
The engine of the left rear hover was on fire, and there were two more dots now closing in on them from the north. She recognized the shape almost at once, and the symbols on the hull only confirmed it; these were no doubt the source of the missile barrage, and they belonged to Talon. There would be no outrunning them this time, and though she yelled a warning and started to try and turn the van around, it was only moments before the Talon ships were in range.  
  
The first barrage was thrown off by the wind and Mei’s desperate attempts to barrel roll. It hit the front engines as more alarms went off and smoke began billowing from the hood. The whole vehicle dropped abruptly and started to tilt, and Roadhog was nearly pitched out the back, struggling to keep hold of the chain where Junkrat was still dangling. The ship was starting to limp downward, and Junkrat’s nose was dangerously close to brushing the tops of the trees as he heard the telltale popping of threads where he was precariously hooked by his winter coat.  
  
And when the rear engine died completely, that side of the ship dropped out from under Hog’s boots. He fell, the slack in the chain rippling along its length until Junkrat was jerked to and fro in the air, and then dropped into the treeline as the branches swallowed him up. There was a ripping noise and a cut-off scream, and then the hook was left spinning merrily in the air, empty of its charge, and Junkrat was gone entirely.  
  
“JAMIE! JAMIE, NO!” Mei’s wail cut through even the shrieking of the wind and the pops of the burning engines, slamming on the brakes to try and turn back around.  
  
Roadhog managed to right himself, shoving Bastion out of his way as he lunged back towards the front, his gigantic hand closing around both of Mei’s hand and the control grip beneath. Wheezing a breath, he snarled a low, “Keep going!”  
  
“No! Jamison, he-”  
  
“Keep going forward! No help if we’re dead!” Roadhog’s grip was like iron around her as he kept the ship straight.  
  
He was right. Military training and common sense bade them keep moving forward and staying on the defense until they could safely go back for help. But no amount of training in Lena’s VR Air Battle simulators could prepare for something like this. Their ship was barely moving forward on two and a half engines, trailing smoke and flames. Their only hope was to find a place on the mountainside that was clear enough to bail onto, but as they limped on their way, the Talon fighters were already upon them like lightning.  
  
Bastion was still perched in the back cargo, its turret gun swiveling desperately in hopes that the ships would pass by. Instead, another round of pulse bullets slammed into the side of their burning ship. It sheared through the metal like melted butter, nearly cutting the structure in two as sparks flew and the whole back end screeched and started to come apart. Bastion looked down as the floor gave way and sagged, and its turret form was already whirring and struggling to change back before it simply slid backwards and then dropped out of sight without a sound. With a panicked storm of tweeting and a flash of yellow feathers, Ganymede dove after it.  
  
Roadhog and Mei, and Snowball were the only ones left inside the rapidly disintegrating vehicle. Cracks had started to appear in the windshield and the GPS abruptly flickered off and went dead as the ‘check engine’ light lit up helpfully. Worse yet, the steering controls weren’t responding properly anymore, and she was sure she could smell burning behind the main control panel.  
  
“Mr. Roadhog, brace yourself!” she cried aloud, turning the ship downward. “I’m going to try to land it!”  
  
Roadhog buckled his seatbelt.  
  
The ship dropped again as the Talon fighters suddenly hung back, watching the van as it careened for the mountainside. The emergency lights were still flashing uselessly, blinking amongst the smoke and flames as it hit the treetops and bounced several times before it hit the stony slope. It went spinning like a toy, shedding science equipments and a flurry of papers, screeching across the rocks in a storm of sparks before slowly skidding to a stop against a massive boulder. It lay there, electric blue sparks still popping around it and fire starting to spread across the twisted hull.  
  
With their target firmly incapacitated, the Talon ships dove down after them.

  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Inside the wreckage, Roadhog had braced himself. The front of the van had dented inward and he was pretty sure that his leg had dented in with it, judging by the immense pain radiating up his femur, but he was alive and conscious. Well, semi-conscious. And being only semi-conscious and very much in pain was hardly ideal for their situation. Groping in his winter pack by his belly, he pulled out the familiar yellow canister, clicking it into place with one smooth well-practiced motion. The tab was pulled and the hogdrogen flooded his mask, his nose, and then his lungs in succession. The pain faded to a manageable level for now, and the fuzzy redness around his vision slowly came into focus.  
  
Mei was laying unmoving next to him, her arms hanging limply and her face buried in the airbag, and red was trickling down from where she rested against the rough white fabric. Hesitating slightly, Hog reached out one huge gloved hand and gently peeled her up and away from it. Her glasses were shattered, and it looked like her nose had been shattered with it, along with a deep open cut across her forehead. She flopped almost bonelessly in his grip, out cold. But she moaned a little when he moved her, and she was alive. The relief that flooded through him was almost better than the hogdrogen.  
  
“Tango down, two survivors, two fatalities.”  
  
Hog turned his head very slowly at the sound of a garbled voice outside, followed by the answering static of a radio. The Talon agents were advancing on what remained of their ship, weapons drawn, as they made their way through the debris. He heard one of them pause.  
  
“Papers have the Overwatch symbol on them. Sending visual…Confirmed…” The soldier waited for a moment, holding up one hand to signal the pause of his cohorts, before nodding. “Preparing for transport of the two captives for questioning…Roger that. Right, let’s take a look at who they sent. Move in, pacify any-”  
  
The hook and chain hurtled out of the black smoke, snagging one of the oncoming Talon troops and yanking them back out of sight before they could even react. Inside, there was a very brief yell, followed by the sound of a gun firing and the clatter of scrap metal…and then a sort of wet splattering noise. The other troops lifted their weapons as an immense shape lifted up out of the smoke and vapor, the massive junker rearing up to his full height, the swine mask’s blank glass lenses glinting like a dead thing’s, and the adorable pom-pom on Ana’s winter pig hat bobbling to and fro.  
  
Mei’s unconscious form had been unceremoniously draped over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry, her face smearing fresh blood into his coat. It was a precarious perch, but he needed both arms free, reaching into the debris of the ship and slamming a fistful of loose scrap and bolts into the feeder of his gun. When the first Talon agent opened fire, bullets ripping through his brand new parka and into the scarred meat of his thick hide, he answered in kind. A spray of razor-edged metal and rusted nails had always served him as well as any other ammo, and the screams that came after (if they had time to scream, anyway) were always like music to his ears.  
  
He descended upon the Talon troops like a thunderstorm. And if Mei had been awake, she could have testified that Australian storms were like no others in the world. The old junker had been nigh-legendary in his homeland, a one-man apocalyptic force responsible for the massacre of any errant omnic, junker, or fool that dared cross him. And that was what Talon faced now. The scrap gun clanked and shot, clanked and shot again, his other hand whirling the heavy metal hook around on its chain to drag in those who were stupid enough to think themselves out of his range. He dispatched two of them in very short order, and his heavy spiked boot brutally stomped one down into the snow when he saw them struggling to get back up again.  
  
Snowball finally managed to struggle its way out of the wreck of the van, blaring a cute beeping warcry as its emoticon eyes flashed into its ‘anger’ face. The little bot hadn’t been outfitted with any of its cryo-packets for a battle, but upon seeing Mei injured and under attack, it hurtled towards one of the Talon trooper’s faces, backing up and slamming into them again and again. After attacking Junkrat so many times, it had gotten adept at dodging limbs and fists, and threw itself at the offending soldier with all its might.  
  
 Roadhog focused on the remaining agents. More bullets tore into his back, and when he turned to punish the man who had thought that would work against someone like him, he felt something spear through his coat, pinpricking into his skin with little metal prongs. The wires running from were attached to a little black box one of the other agents was holding.  
  
_Heh. They thought a taser would work? What sort of idiot thought a taser would-_  
  
The sheer power of the electrical volts that shot through him a moment later was certainly surprising. His limbs spasmed and stiffened, and he could feel Mei slipping out of his grasp. Powering through the pain, he managed to grasp blindly for the wires attached to the electrical prongs, ripping them free. Grabbing the unconscious girl in the crook of one arm, he felt more of the little prongs hit the massive expanse of his back, and then another by his shoulder.  
  
“Boss wants them alive!” He heard one of them say, just as more electrical convulsions ripped through him. He groaned, spasming once more despite his best efforts, as Mei was flung out of his grip and onto the snow, the huge junker collapsing to one knee a moment later.  
  
One of the troopers moved towards the girl, and was met with the spiked metal knuckles of Roadhog’s fist as they were punched hard enough to send them flying. With steam rising from the burnt areas of his skin surrounding the electric spikes, he tried to gather her back up again, crouching over her downed form in the blood-spattered snow. Snowball beeped in alarm and rushed towards them, and was hit with another set of the flying prongs. Yanked back by the wire suddenly attached to its underside, it flashed a series of exclamation marks and tried to pull away. A bolt of white arced from the black device, over the wire, and buzzed through its circuits, overloading them with a series of loud pops and crackling noises. With its screen flashing random symbols and emotes, it wavered from side to side before it went black and dead, dropping to the ground with a muffled thud.  
  
The thud when Roadhog hit the ground was much, much louder. The combined voltage from the Talon’s weaponry had finally downed even the mightiest of them, as the massive junker sprawled out in the snow with his heavy arm flung over the girl next to him. He lay unmoving as the remaining troopers swarmed over them both, arguing with one another as they tried to figure out how to attach their cuffs to fit over Hog’s thick wrists, and who would be stuck trying to move him into one of the ships.  
  
Mei was far easier to handle. Her limbs were quickly bound together before being lifted up and hauled away. One of the agents paused only to aim his visual device at her face, and was promptly answered by a low, gravely voice with an echoing undertone, sounding in the commlink in his ear.  
  
“…Agent Mei-Ling Zhou, one of the original organization’s members. Hm. Admittedly, that’s a…surprise. Bring her in. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, and I’m sure she can’t _wait_ to catch up with her old friends…”

  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Sometime later, the Talon ships were gone and the fire had finally died down in the wreckage of the van, smoldering with little bits of black ash flying away into the screaming winds. The snow had been stomped down around it, spattered with red, and all bodies and prisoners removed. Of its original occupants, nothing remained but the burnt-out husk of Snowball, half-buried and lifeless, and a pair of twisted, broken glasses abandoned on the cold ground.


	5. Chapter 5

The cold was eating away at her; little crystals digging their sharp, beautiful patterns into her mind. There was nothing but ice, reflecting little diamond-specks of light behind her closed eyelids; and everything was still and frozen and silent. And this time there was no laughing warmth, no source of heat to drag her to its chest and wrap her in its long arms, no sharp teeth against the top of her ear or her neck, nothing to melt it and drive it away. The ice would take her, this time, and there was nothing she could do. The life in her was already seeping away, consumed by the unrelenting winter. Maybe there was still a little mist on her breath, one last gasp of the warmth leaving her body before the bitter wind took it away and it was forgotten with everything else in these deserted ruins. She would be entombed here forever in the cold of the Antarctic, with the rest of the dead.  
  
_Just like she should have died, years ago…_  
  
Until her body shuddered hard and consciousness returned to her quite suddenly, like a shock of hot water being thrown over her senses, coming to and coughing raggedly as her eyes creaked open. Her first real thought was that she must have been waking up from the crash, with vague memories of the rocky mountainside getting closer and closer before there was a whirl of metal and fire and she had passed out. But she wasn’t in the ship anymore, that much was immediately clear. And if she wasn’t in the ship, she had no idea where she was.  
  
Somewhere cold..  
  
She was laying on her side on the frigid ground, on unfamiliar and very dirty old linoleum. Her hands were cuffed in front of her, clamped around her bare wrists where her gloves had been removed, and her fingertips were slightly blue. Her coat was hanging askew on her shoulders, her clothes were in disarray, her belt with all her supplies was missing, and she was rumpled in several places that would have been very inappropriate to rumple. No doubt she’d been searched and then dumped here in…wherever this was. With a groan, drawing in her bound hands to try and tuck them into her coat, she slowly sat up and looked around her.  
  
It looked like some sort of conference room, though not one known to her. It was featureless and gray, with nothing but a large table and a stacked pile of chairs off to one side. One of the lights overhead flickered ominously, humming as the electrical circuit shorted out again and again. And everything seemed…old. When she looked again, even with the blurriness of her missing glasses, the furniture looked strangely out of date, something from decades ago. The paint on the walls was chipped and peeling, there were water marks that stained the popcorn ceilings a filthy brown, and everything was covered in recently-disturbed layers of gray dust. If this really was an old meeting room, then nobody had held a meeting here in a long, long time.  
  
And despite being indoors, it was horribly cold. Her breath clouded in front of her on every exhalation, tongue flicking out to wet her dry lips as she went to stagger slowly to her feet. Everything was still sore, likely from the crash, when all her attempts to outmaneuver Talon had failed. And now Talon had brought her here to whatever this place was.  
  
As she looked about, she felt a familiar weight and a faint jingle, reaching up to her bun and finding that her treasured snowflake pin was miraculously still in place. Likely when they’d tossed her onto the ground to search her, they’d simply forgotten to remove it in their haste. It wasn’t much, but its simple presence was at least a miniscule comfort she desperately needed right now. She removed it quickly, sending her hair tumbling down and tucking it very carefully between her breasts, clamped in place between her bra. Straightening her shirt back out, she went to see if there were any exits to be made.  
  
Holding her cuffed hands to her side, which felt severely bruised or mildly broken, she stumbled to the door and pulled. Locked. Of course. She tried giving it a little kick. Too strong for someone like her to knock it down. And Roadhog was nowhere in sight to do it for her. Much less anybody else…  
  
Tendrils of panic started to creep in at the corners of her mind. What had happened to Roadhog? Surely someone like him would have survived the crash, but had Talon captured him too? Maybe they were keeping him prisoner in some other frozen corner of whatever decrepit old facility they’d been brought to? Would they even bother to capture someone like him, or simply kill him outright? And what about Junkrat, Bastion, Snowball, or Ganymede? Were any of them all right? Were any of them even alive? The scream that Junkrat had made when he’d fallen and been swallowed up by the trees, and she’d had to keep going…That thought chilled her even more than the frigid temperatures.  
  
She was breathing a little harder than she should have, clutching her hands to her chest to try and stifle it. Hyperventilating wouldn’t help, after all, but her lungs were warring inside her bruised ribs despite her best efforts. “ _Qǐng lěngjìng_ …”She tried to speak aloud for a little comfort, no matter how much her voice was shaking and how false the words felt. “All right, Mei… Don’t get cold feet now. Snowball isn’t here this time, but we’ve gotten out of worse. The others are still out there and they are counting on you. We’re just going to…” She trailed off for a moment, still trying to gather her thoughts. “We’re going to be all right. We’ll find out where we are, regroup, and then put out a distress call. So don’t you dare panic. The others still need you!”  
  
_Find out where they were. Regroup. Distress call._ It was hardly a plan at all, but it was all she had to go on. If the rest of her misbegotten team was still out there, she needed to find them, and soon.  
  
She tried kicking the door again. It rattled, but showed no signs of giving way. Maybe she should try throwing one of the chairs at it? It might make noise and garner some no-doubt unwanted attention, but she hadn’t heard any voices outside so far. Drawing her still half-frozen hands out of her coat, she went to reach for the top of the stack of old furniture…  
  
…and then nearly screamed aloud when one of the chairs started to ring. She jolted backward, almost falling. There was another jingling chime before she recognized the sound of a phone going off. Warily slipping forward, she peeked between the chairs and saw a dim light wedged in between them. It rang again, then again, and Mei looked around in a bit of a daze before finally going to reach in and grab it. Flicking it open, she held it to one ear and waited a moment before offering a breathless little, “Hello?”  
  
“Hola!” a cheerful female voice answered on the other end. “And it only took you seven rings to pick up. Aw, and here I was worrying that you weren’t as smart as I’d heard.”  
  
Mei frowned down at the phone, the screen now showing a white sugar skull against a scrolling purple background, cupping her frozen hands around the device to muffle her voice. “Who is this? Where am I? What have you done w-”  
  
“Take it easy, pobrecita. You know that old saying, ‘all things in good time’? I just want to make sure we’re starting things off on the right foot. As for me…” Mei heard the woman pause dramatically before practically purring into the phone, “They call me…Sombra.”  
  
Mei waited, but no more information seemed to be forthcoming. “…Who is that?”  
  
The woman seemed to bristle at the apparent lack of recognition, her voice gaining a bit of an edge. “Sombra. Sombra! _The_ Sombra?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Do they seriously not warn you about me at your organization? All right, a bit of a reputation boost was due soon anyway, but let’s put a pin in that for now. The important thing for you to know is that I’m your friend, Mei-Ling Zhou. And right now, I’m the only friend you have around here.” The woman, this so-called Sombra, chuckled into her ear. “And for the record, I think you might be the cutest friend I have. I mean, look at you, nobody mentioned you’d be so adorable!”  
  
Mei’s eyes darted, searching the ceilings and corners for a camera or any devices. She squinted hard, but still couldn’t make anything out amongst the water stains and cobwebs.  
  
Sombra laughed again, and it sounded like she was popping a piece of gum between her teeth before asking, “Nervous? Probably wise, with what’s coming up. Here’s the scoop. Your big puerco friend is with us, la rata and the bot aren’t. Probably for the best, if the bot was infected. Also, really? You and the ratty one? What is _with_ your taste in men, amiga?”  
  
Mei held her forehead, brain still spinning. This Sombra character put her ill at ease on a level she couldn’t even describe, so casually discussing her friends’ possible demises and then asking her about her love life like they were old pals. And something about Bastion being infected? For some reason, she answered the love question first, and wasn’t sure why. “Because he’s…funny. And nice. And I like him. And how do you know what he’s like, have you met him before? Please, if you know what happened to him, you have to tell me. And Mr. Roadhog too. And Bastion. What do you mean, ‘infected’? That song…Are you making him sing that song? The hotel! Were you at the hotel that night when-”  
  
Sombra cut her off with a snort. “Oh please, like I would stay in a dump of a town like around here? So the bot’s at the singing stage and you don’t know why? Mm, interesting. You’re an interesting person, Mei-Ling, and I really like interesting people. They’re my favorite kind of people.”  
  
“Tell me what that means!” Mei said, a little more desperately, clutching the phone to her cold cheek as she huddled near the stack of chairs. “Or…if you can’t, at least let me out? If they’re out there, what if they’re hurt? I have to help them! Y-you keep saying we’re friends, please-”  
  
“Hold on,” Sombra said abruptly, “Oh, looks like one of my other friends is going to pay you a visit here soon. In fact, I think he’s already on his way, so we’re going to have to cut this short until next time. Just try not to say anything that will make him kill you, hm? You’re just too cute for that. I’d get upset.”  
  
“Already on his way? Who? Kill me? Please, don’t hang up! Tell me, who-”  
  
“Hide the phone. Oh, and as a little gesture of good will, there should be a pair of your spare glasses a little further in with those chairs. Because that’s what friends do, amiga, is do each other little favors. Let’s talk again soon, yeah? Hugs n’ kisses! Adios!”  
  
“Wait!” Mei said, but the other end had already clicked and hung up.  
  
She stood looking dumbly at the phone for a moment before fumbling at it with her bound hands, looking around frantically for a place to hide it. At a bit of a loss, she finally pushed open her shirt and shoved it into the side of a bra cup, near her hidden hairpin, tucking it down and smoothing her coat over it before glancing around. Well, it had been about ten minutes and she now had multiple contraband items hidden in her bosom, and Junkrat wasn’t even here to make a lewd comment.  
  
_She wished he was…_  
  
Remembering Sombra’s words, she quickly went digging around in the chairs again, and emerged a moment later clutching her spare glasses. Setting them on her nose, the familiar weight and clarity brought little comfort, especially when she heard heavy footfalls from what must have been a hallway outside the door.  
  
Instinctively, she backed towards the far wall, and watched in wary silence as the footsteps paused outside…and then came the click and hiss of the lock before it swung open.  
  
  
***

* * *

 

  
  
In stepped the tall, imposing figure of a man in black leather, black robes, and a black cowl, broken only by the stark bone white of the mask that obscured whatever no doubt ghoulish features lay beneath. A very faint black mist hung around his feet, the metal bottoms of his boots clanking against the cold floor. Swinging his neck with a creak of what she hoped was bone, he rolled his head in a slow circle before turning his masked face towards her.  
  
Mei took another step back.  
  
When he spoke, his voice echoed strangely somewhere inside the mask, deep and gravely and painful-sounding. “Overwatch Agent Mei-Ling Zhou… One of the original ranks and all. I suppose the reports of the science team’s demise were incorrect.” He did not sound particularly impressed, nor happy about it. “And now they’re sending someone like you out into the field? Where is Opara? Or someone worth talking to.”  
  
Cold rage flared in her chest at the name, and her teeth grit together. She dared not advance, voice still soft. “Don’t…Don’t you say anything about Opara. Or any of them. You can just talk to me, instead. Leave them out of it.”  
  
“Oh?” He intoned, voice still flat.  
  
“I know who you are.”  
  
That seemed to interest him a little more, the mist whirling around him as he took a step towards her. And when he spoke, there was a strange tone to his already strange voice. “Ah, you know me? You know who I was? Then you know-”  
  
“I know you’re the Reaper. You’re a lead Talon agent, a terrorist and a murderer, and I already know you’re very mean!”  
  
The specter paused as if studying her for a moment before drawing back. The genuine interest was gone, replaced by that bored amusement again. “Hm… Guilty.” He loomed over her, staring downward. He was hardly as tall as Junkrat or Roadhog, and she was well used to people looming over her, but this felt wrong. She was cornered by someone much larger and stronger than her, a rumored ghost of a man whose existence was unnatural and dangerous, and who had a body count that even Overwatch didn’t know the extent of. She tried to take another step back, but her heels hit the wall.  
  
“Why are you here, Zhou,” he said, more of a flat demand than a question. “And how many more are coming.”  
  
“Coming? This is just a mistake. I-I’m sure we can still talk this out.” She wished her voice sounded stronger. She’d never fared well during confrontations with others- except for arguing with Jamison- and her voice tended to waver, crack, and sound on the verge of tears at times, no matter how hard she tried. But she tried anyway, keeping her eyes on him even as her voice betrayed her with another squeak. “We’re a science survey team, that’s all. We were here to look into the missing omnics. S-so, please, if you know anything about my missing teammates-”  
  
“Your team is dead.”  
  
“No. No, I know they’re not dead, and-”  
  
“But then, judging by your reaction with Opara and the others, I wager that the initial news about your expedition was true. I suppose you should be used to the idea of dead teammates.”  
  
There was that feeling again, that coiled rage that slithered and writhed in a tight little weighted ball inside her chest, insulated by wary fear. He was trying to bait her, but it was affecting her far more deeply than she wished. Still, she stifled any reprisal in favor of merely tightening her fists inside her coat, repeating, “Nobody is coming. At least not yet. Please, if you have the rest of my team, don’t hurt them.”  
  
“The cute act won’t work here, Zhou. Your ‘science team’ consisting of you, two Australian criminal mercenaries, and an omnic gun, showing up here during our operation.”  
  
She paused at that, having to think before answering. “Well…I know that it’s an…odd team,” she admitted. “But they’re still my team! We don’t know about your operation here…or why Talon has been kidnapping local omnics!” She narrowed her eyes a little behind her glasses, trying to turn the tables to get at least a little power back in such a situation. “My team came here to find out the cause of the disappearances and malfunctions, and we found you! I don’t know what Talon is up to, but you won’t get away with it! Those omnics are innocent citizens-”  
  
He scoffed. “My organization has better things to do than sit in this miserable frozen hellhole and kidnap service bots for several decades, Zhou. You’re either playing stupid, and believe me, you seem to be very good at that…or you actually don’t know what’s here.”  
  
That made her pause. The reports had indeed said that the vanishing omnics had started several decades ago, likely before Talon had even existed. Reaper might have been correct in his denial. The timelines didn’t match up. “But, then what is Talon doing here? What is this place? What about the missing omnics? And my team-”  
  
“I told you, your team is dead,” he growled.  
  
She didn’t waver, swallowing hard behind the fur of her collar. “I told you. No they’re not. I know it.”  
  
“Always so hopeful, aren’t you. I suppose you might have said the same thing about Opara and the others, when Overwatch abandoned you all to die?” He examined his metallic claws, taking note when the girl froze at his words. “But don’t feel too special. Overwatch abandoned so many others, over the years. You’re just one of the few that went crawling back to them, even after everything they’ve done…How _pathetic_.”  
  
She didn’t answer him.  
  
He continued. “I thought it was an error when your name popped up again in those hacked files. I was there when the order went out for non-retrieval, all those years ago. Too many resources for a handful of dead weathermen, they said. They left you there. And after that, you and your team were just another set of numbers lost in the piles of paperwork. Just another name to add to the list of casualties. You’ve been dead for years, Zhou. Just. Like. Me.”  
  
She drew away with a frown, staring at him a little harder as if it would help her see through the mask to whoever or whatever lay beneath it. “Who are you? Who were you?”  
  
“Me? Let’s say that I have experience in dealing with dead things. I’m the one who will finally put the stake in Overwatch’s rotten heart, if that’s what it will take to finally kill it.”  
  
“Y-you’re wrong, they’re not like that…”  
  
“Are you going to say they’ve changed? I suppose you’re right about that much. Overwatch used to be a name before that stupid monkey decided to resurrect its corpse. Now you’re just another gang of pretenders under a dead symbol. Hiring mercenaries and killers and anyone who will do anything for the money… And I thought Talon had trouble with its standards,” he said wryly. “You’re just another merc group, buying up people like this…”  
  
He took a step closer and gestured with one claw before he fiddled with the viscomm device on his arm, a light flickering above it as he flicked the controls. A holographic display lit up into a screen before her, and she looked to the rather horrific scene it depicted. Roadhog was bound in a room much drearier than the one she was in, his arms bound behind him. He was still breathing, massive belly heaving from the effort, and she thought she could see dark puddles of what looked like blood on the floor. She went a little white in the face, eyes wide behind her glasses, expression blanked.  
  
Reaper gestured to the imprisoned junker idly. “Part of your ‘science survey team’, Zhou? A masked killer who calls himself a harbinger of the apocalypse? Heh. ‘Overwatch’.”  
  
Angry panic rushed through her at the sight of her captive friend, surging forward off the wall. “Don’t hurt him! Don’t you dare hurt him!”  
  
He offered a languid shrug. “If it were up to me…you would both be dead by now. But, there seems to be some interest in keeping you alive. For now. I suggest you don’t press your luck.”  
  
“What is this about, then?! You’ve captured us both but you won’t tell me where we are, if we can negotiate, what you're doing here, or anything! Are you just in here to taunt me and insult me? Why? Just to make yourself feel better?”  
  
“Pressing your luck already. Why are you trying to face me, Zhou?” The expressionless mask loomed a little closer to her, leaning down, and she could feel the cold radiating off him like fire. “Why are you pretending to be stronger than you really are?”  
  
But Mei had always been strong in the face of cold. If there was anything she could stand against, it was the cold. She narrowed her eyes at him, cheeks puffing, and though she had never been good at insults, she spat the first thing she could think of. “Well! W-why do you try so hard to be scary, you…you _owl_!”  
  
For a moment, she thought she could hear a faint, raucous laughter from the ghoulish man’s earpiece. Reaper growled a low, warning “Sombra…” before turning back to face her.  
  
“I saw you have Mr. Roadhog,” she said, hoping she sounded confident despite the nerves gnawing in the empty pit of her stomach. “Where is Bastion? And where are you keeping Jamis-… Junkrat. If you have Agent Junkrat, where is he?”  
  
“Junkrat? Ah, the other junker your lot hired. I hear that one is your personal _favorite_.” He laughed. It was an unpleasant sound, something that rasped and tore out of his throat with dry claws, echoing in on itself, and only the shaking of his shoulders made her realize it was a laugh at all. “We knew you had stooped to hiring mercenaries, but junkers? Especially those junkers? Well, he’s dead anyway. Fell from your ship during the first strike. Not long after, we blew your bot out of the sky as well. You and the obesity warrior are our only survivors…Congratulations to you...”  
  
Her jaw tightened slightly, but she didn’t flinch as she stared him down. “No. You’re a liar. You’re lying to me.”  
  
“You’ve gotten bolder, Zhou.” The amusement in his voice did not deter her.  
  
“You are lying to me,” she stated again, and this time her voice didn’t waver. “He’s not dead. He might have fallen, but he’s not dead.”  
  
“And what makes you say that.”  
  
“Because I didn’t see him die. Because he’s still out there. Because you don’t know how he is. And you don’t know that if _anyone_ can survive against the odds, it’s him!”  
  



	6. Chapter 6

The puddle of red stood like a beacon against the white and gray of the snow, which always lingered for long months in the cold shadow of the forest trees. It stained the once clean white and had spread outward into a rather gruesome splatter, growing slowly and steadily from the warm drops of red that still dripped steadily from above. High, high in the treetops, was the source of that blood; the body twisted and impaled on one of the tall, sharp pines that dominated the coniferous woods. Junkrat’s form hung limply amongst the branches, one of them driven right through the meat of his shoulder and out the other side. He was riddled with scratches and gashes from other branches as he had crashed downward, and blood dripped steadily from out of his torn coat, oozing down his hanging body and trickling off the tip of his single boot.  
  
But occasionally, he still twitched, or made soft little half-whimpers. He was still alive, even if he didn’t know it.  
  
His skull felt like it had been caved in, and he was dimly aware that he could feel his heartbeat pulsing in the meat of his brain; pink and pale, covered in creepy spidery blue veins like he’d seen in the picture books or spilled out on the sands of the Outback when someone’s skull broke open, which was often. The pain was intense, and just the sensation of there being pain seemed to activate the chemicals inside that brain. His mind was awash in black and a very distant rhythmic thudding, but he’d never liked the dark, and fought against it even there. There were a few flickers of white in the void, little sparks against the black, trying to trigger itself back to consciousness.  
  
He needed help (as he often did) and his muscles seized and moved on their own. His fingers twitched and curled, his jaw opened and his thick tongue flopped, and he heard his voice cry out a rasping and muffled, “M-Mum… Mummy?”  
  
She didn’t answer, of course. She never had.  
  
The sparks in his brain snapped again, brighter and with more clarity, and he tried calling out again for someone a little more recent, someone who always answered- the man with the pig head who had stayed by his side for years. Hog had to be there. As far as Rat was concerned, he had always been there. It was hard to even imagine Hog not being around. His stalwart partner and bodyguard was supposed to keep him out of situations exactly like this one, after all. He listened for the baritone push and pull of his massive lungs, or the ever-present mechanical grind of the mask’s filters. He heard nothing. “Roadie? Roadhog?”  
  
Still no answer.  
  
There was the faint sensation of cold. He knew what cold was, and he didn’t like it. Which was so odd that he’d become so fixated on a little lady who espoused such cold. Was she the source of this cold? If she was cold, he’d simply need to warm her up, that was all. By some strange muscle memory, he reached out for her, bloody fingers expecting to find soft skin and downy furs…and instead they brushed more jagged wet pine needles and prickling branches. And then consciousness returned suddenly and all at once, as the sparks popped yet again and his brain truly rekindled in a flash of white and black and flaming colors. He jolted up from out of nowhere, body aching and vision blurry, squalling out a wild, “Mei! MEEEIIII?!”  
  
She didn’t answer either.  
  
He was alone, gagging for air as he became actually aware of the immense amount of pain he was truly in. He looked around wild-eyed, breathing heavily as he clawed blindly at the horrible burning sensation emanating from his shoulder. Near his tattoo, he could feel something protruding out of the skin where it was very much not supposed to be. It was the blood-soaked tree branch that had kept him from hitting the ground, but had damaged him quite gruesomely in the process. It had impaled him straight through. He grit his teeth hard enough that they scraped audibly, pushing spruce needles and twigs away from him, kicking and flailing. Forget figuring out what had happened. He wanted off, and he wanted off right now.  
  
The bough limb through his shoulder creaked dangerously as the weight shifted, and he grasped onto the part that protruded in front of him, wrenching it hard. More pain blossomed in his torso for his efforts, but he heard another series of cracking sounds, followed by a loud snap. He felt the pressure in his shoulder give for a moment, and then he realized that the branch had broken and his only support up here had broken with it.  
  
He fell yet again.  
  
Crashing through more branches and leaves, screaming the entire way, he plummeted downward, tumbling end over end before he broke free of the tree entirely and landed with a muffled thud in the blood-spattered snow beneath, broken twigs and debris began raining on top of him soon after. The soft snow broke his fall a bit, but he could only lay there for several long minutes, still gasping for breath and trying to gather his senses. Moaning noisily, he rolled onto his knees, groping for the broken wood in his shoulder and grasping hold. He pulled, and it slid free from the gaping wound by his collarbone with a sickening wet noise, followed by a spurting flood of liquid red.  
  
Perhaps he shouldn’t have done that… But well, he’d done it. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d pulled bits and pieces out of his own open wounds. He buried himself in the snow like he’d done so often in the sand, shoveling it onto the bloody hole through his flesh. But the ice burned him like the sand had never done, and he shrieked all the louder for it. Pulling himself up out of the stained white and red, he gripped his wounded shoulder briefly before inspecting the rest of him. His peg’s joints were visibly out of position, but his arm was intact. His jacket was ripped in a hundred places and he was absolutely covered in rips and cuts, but miraculously, nothing seemed broken. Wiping at the sweat beaded on his forehead, he glanced around him, snatching his winter hat where it had fallen nearby and shoving it into the open wound. He watched irritably as it was steadily taken over by spreading crimson, huffing hot breath from his nostrils and watching it turn into steam in the cold air.  
  
Memory was always a bit of a patchy subject, but he knew he had fallen when the van was hit. But the long and short of it was that he’d lived, so now he had to keep going. Keep going and find the others, wherever the hell they’d gone off to. He couldn’t see where the sun was, the sky blotted out by the conifers, but he put it at some point in the later afternoon, before the sunset. Hopefully it was still the same day, since he doubted he would have survived hanging in the trees overnight. That meant that he’d been out for hours, and nobody had come back for him. Either they had lost him and were still searching, or (more likely) the ship had been overtaken and they weren’t even able to look for him. Either dead or captured, he figured. And neither of those worked out in his favor.  
  
He was yet again on his own.  
  
Well, _SHITE_.  
  
He shivered miserably as a gust of cold wind shrieked past him, chilling the liquid blood that had seeped into his coat. Turning his face away from the gale, his eyes darted to the familiar shape of one of his frag grenades laying in the snow. Nearby was another one, and then another…and past those, the familiar shape of his grenade launcher, its handle sticking up out of the snowbank. Wading through the wet powder, he set about picking them up, snapping them all into place and slinging the launcher around to his back. He’d been shot down whilst fighting and still had his proverbial armory that had fallen with him…but he simply hadn’t had the presence of mind to fall with his supply pack. In place of food and blankets and radios, he had his weapons and that was all.  
  
Clutching his aching shoulder with his good arm, he turned back towards the spot where his weapons had fallen, addled brain sparking more rapidfire calculations. He’d been moving forward, he’d dropped the weapons first, trail was going off in that direction, so wherever the ship had gone….it was somewhere vaguely in the other direction. Or, well, it might have been nowhere near it, by now. But it was the only thing to go on. So, huddling into his blood-drenched coat and loaded down with useless weaponry, he started walking.

  
  
***

* * *

  
  
“Magnesium sulfate, that’s the ticket. Two pinchies extra, reinforce the casings a bit. Too volatile? Might jostle. Do one pinchie first, see how that one rubs out…”  
  
He continued plowing his way between the trees as the sky above started to turn from blue to yellowish, the first light of a setting sun.  
  
“Roadie coulda done a better job. Really, mate, how hard is it to keep track of one rat? Put holes in my long undies, that hook did. Now I got a bluster aimed right on my arse crack, like sort of whistlin’ down it. Like a windtunnel! Like when I made windtunnel flags out of my old socks. Didn’t need two pairs of socks, I said, only got one foot. Roadie said I could’ve just worn the other socks on that same foot too, but the hell does he know about men’s hosiery anyway? Then again, he’s a real scholar sort, a real old soul kind of gent… Shame he’s not around when I actually need him. Always the way, isn’t it?”  
  
The quiet of the snowy woods was stifling. The wind had driven away anything with a brain (not including him, of course) and the only sound was the occasional gale and the rustle of tree branches. And well, he had a bit of a sore spot regarding tree branches right now, and didn’t want to hear them. So he talked instead, because he liked hearing his own voice. Usually he liked hearing certain other voices too, of course. But he was a bloke who always knew how to make do.  
  
“S’cold out. Don’t have anything for it, do I?” he muttered. “Wish Mei was here, she’d know what to do in the cold. She always knows what to do. Shoulda switched places, I think. Roadie and I coulda got captured and given those yobbos the whatfor, and she knows what to do with all this snow and ice shit. She’d stand a better chance out here. But fuck me, then she’d be alone, wouldn’t she? We all know how she gets when she’s alone and cold. Can’t do that to her, gotta keep a little snowpea like her real warm and safe. Safe and soft. Fuck, she’s soft…Soft and sweet…Real sweet-tastin’…”  
  
He felt the beginnings of a familiar stirring inside his trousers, before quickly aiming a downward punch to his groin, scowling sternly. “Oi! Knock that off! That’s the last thing I need right now! All right, just gotta concentrate, here…We’ll figure something out, eh?”  
  
The endless woods gave no clues as to whether he was on the right path or not…or if he was on a path at all. Worse yet, he was running out of daylight. The sky was becoming less blue and more orange, and when he stopped to look up at it and try to guess the time, he thought he saw a little flash of yellow, too. In fact, the little speck of yellow abruptly changed direction, and hurtled down at him, tweeting madly.  
  
He flailed as it set upon him, trilling and chirping, whirling around him as the junker blindly thrashed both arms. “Augh! The hell is that! Come at me, ya drongo! I’ll knock the- Oh, it’s you.”  
  
Ganymede alighted on a fallen log a short distance away, hopping up and down and still setting up one hell of a birdy racket. Junkrat squinted at the little cardinal with no small amount of distrust. Well, it wasn’t much, but it was the first sign of life he’d seen since waking up. “Yeah, you. Your name was…” His eyes drifted apart slightly. _Some sort of fru-fru arse name he could never remember. Whatever._ “…Bird. All right, Bird, what’s the game? Guess your bot pal got scrapped, huh? Well, not to worry, you still got Junkrat on the case. Oi, you know where Roadie and Mei are? Oi! Oi, who’s a good bird! Who’s a good bird that’s gonna lead me to my mates, and then maybe I won’t eat ya! Who’s a good bird!” He bent over and patted his knees like he’d seen people do for their dogs. “C’mon! Find my mates! Find ‘em, Bird!”  
  
Ganymede hopped in a circle before trilling and setting off in a flash of feathers once more. Brightening, Junkrat limped after it as quick as he could, eyes up as he followed the Eichenwalde cardinal through the woods. Maybe it was good fortune that he’d never succeeded in eating the damn thing. It seemed keen enough to be his guide as he floundered through the snow, his eyes still up and hurrying to follow.  
  
And so he followed, until he felt the toe of his boot slam into something hard, deep within the snow and he fell down face-first into the snowbanks for the hundredth time that day. Peeling himself up and coughing out a mouthful of white flakes, Ganymede landed nearby and began hopping around again. But this time, there was a faint buzzing sound, and Junkrat was fairly sure it wasn’t the bird. Looking around him, he found himself in what seemed to be a little clearing in the woods, surrounded by scattered pieces of metal and screws and little pieces. Some of them were moving, severed limbs and circuits firing as they thrashed in the snow. Lifting his brows, Junkrat glanced behind to see what had tripped him, and found that he’d been snagged on a familiar looking tank-like tread.  
  
“Well that’s a fair suck of the sav, isn’t it! Guess they blew up your little omnic pal before I got the chance, eh?” He waded through the clearing carefully, pausing to examine broken bits and pieces that had been scattered all over. “Or…Nope, not blown up. No ash, no scorch marks. Dents though, lots of those. Fell, didn’t it? Just like me, only got crushed like a can at the bottom. Fell all apart.” He picked up a mangled piece of metal chassis, clanking his fingers on it a few times, before abruptly tossing it back into the snow. “Welp! Less work for me to do, getting rid of it. Come on, Bird. Let’s fuck off and find my mates.”  
  
He started thrashing his way through the snow again, but Ganymede did not follow. The little bird fluttered over to part of the dented metal hull, taking up a perch and just sitting there with his feathers fluffed angrily. Junkrat could have sworn it was glaring at him.  
  
Junkrat snorted. “What! Oh don’t start with me, Bird. Can’t even blame this one on me. Your bot’s dead and I’m not the one who did it. Look, how about we make a deal. You get me out of these shitty woods, I’ll buy you a nice coffeemaker to be your new friend. Right?…No? Anything? Fockin’ hell, Bird, just work with me here!”  
  
Ganymede didn’t budge, and Rat felt his temper start to flare.  
  
“Now you listen here, you weird bot-lovin’ little shit-”  
  
“ _Doo-dee-weeeeEeeeEeee…..Doo-dee-weeeeEeeeEeee…._ ”  
  
Both junker and cardinal perked up at the same time at the strange sound. Ganymede took off, flitting over behind a large boulder, and Junkrat followed. Bastion’s main chassis lay half buried, though there wasn’t much left of it. It was little more than a head with a cracked eyelight, part of its torso, and something that Junkrat recognized as its repair arm, waving uselessly now that all of its parts were too far away to reach. Still, even with sparks popping from a broken circuit in its neck, it managed to slowly look up at them, eye flickering.  
  
“ _Doo-dee-weeeeeEeeeEeee…._ ”  
  
Ganymede landed on its head, pecking gently at the familiar metal, before looking up at Junkrat expectantly.  
  
“ _Tweet!_ ” he said.  
  
The junker guffawed, placing a gloved hand on his chest in a very affronted way. “Like hell! I’ve got actual, real people to find, and we’re running out of time, and I’m not stopping to help some literal scrapheap!”  
  
“ _Tweeaat_!”  
  
“Don’t you bring Mei into this! First off, that promise is null and void! Second, she just said I couldn’t blow it up. Which I didn’t! So this doesn’t count. And third, fuck you, bot got what was good and comin’ to it, even if it wasn’t from my hand. Now let’s GO.”  
  
“ _…Twaat!_ ”  
  
“What did you call me?! Oh, you wanna start some, eh? Well, y-”  
  
Bastion made a sudden painful grinding noise, spurting black oil from its neck. Junkrat, still unimpressed, watched dispassionately as the bot flailed its little repair arm, digging it into the snow…and started to very, very slowly bend the arm and drag itself forward. Inch by inch, it started scraping a path towards one of its fallen limbs laying nearby. Junkrat wrinkled his nose as the process was repeated, and the broken Bastion unit so painstakingly made its way towards its own shattered bodyparts. Ganymede, ever helpful, hopped around in the snow nearby and occasionally kicked or pecked at the heavy metal pieces of his friend.  
  
And for no reason that he could discern, Mei’s voice suddenly blared into his head like an unwelcome but very adorable fog horn.  
  
**YOU. PROMISED.**

He'd promised to be NICE.  
  
Wincing and closing his eyes, Junkrat clutched at his face, covered in scratches and dried blood that came away on his winter glove. That was the whole thing with this love nonsense, he’d found. Whereas before, when he’d wanted a chockie bar at the servo, he’d just grab it and go; now he could feel her disapproval even when she was nowhere near him. He’d even started paying for things. Most of the time. Overwatch had rules, and Mei had even more rules that he didn’t always understand. But it seemed to make her happy that he tried, so usually he tried. Sometimes, he even promised.  
  
**YOU STILL PROMISED.**  
  
Well, promises were made to be fucking broken, weren’t they? Law of the bloody jungle and all. He could play along to a point, but she’d pressed her fucking luck past the breaking point, trusting an omnic and then expecting him to do the same. Mei was smart, no denying that, but the silly girl had been to his homeland. She’d seen what the bots had done to Australia, what they’d done to him. And she still expected him to just stick a smile on his face and go along with it because that’s what he always did, just stick a smile on… What did she fucking know anyway? Lots of people had made promises to him and none of them had kept them…  
  
**BUT YOU PROMISED!**  
  
Well, Roadhog never really made promises but he never broke them either. Could trust him with his life, which Junkrat did. And Mei? Well, she made promises, and kept them to a fault. She was an honest lady, and true, and good to everybody. She’d promise you something and smile at you with those plump little dimple-cheeks and you knew you could trust her because she’d promised you. And she expected the same because of course she did. And he’d made that silly promise to her and who the fuck was she to expect him to keep it just because she was good and he was nothing more than a thief and a liar and maybe could only dream of being someone who actually fucking deserved anything and-  
  
“Fuuuuck! All right, everyone shut up!” Junkrat snapped suddenly, though neither bird nor bot had said anything. He tapped his fingers to the side of his temple, looking down at the broken Bastion unit by his feet. It was still squirming in the snow, and it took every ounce of his self-control not to bring his boot down and crush its head into the ground. Sneering a bit, he pointed down at the struggling omnic fragment as it weakly looked up at him. “Arroight. You listen close, Bird. And you tell your bot what’s the slick. What’s going to happen is, we’re gonna make a little deal. You want me to fix your friend up, yeah, I can do that.”  
  
Ganymede stared at him blankly and pecked at something on the ground.  
  
 “But I have two rules! And the first rule is that I’m the boss! I’m the human here, you’re just a broken pile of bolts, and you’re a weird animal!” He pointed accusingly at Ganymede, still mostly ignoring Bastion’s struggles. “I’m the human, so I’m in charge, and you gotta do what I say. No exceptions unless I make the exceptions! Second rule is, no weapons except mine. You think you can fucking sneak up on me, I’ll blast your metal arse so high into the sky it’ll turn the moon black with oil, you get me? The frags, the mines, the bullets, whatever, those are mine. Again, no exceptions unless I feel like it. And the third rule is, once we find Hog and Mei and get back to things, you’re gonna tell her that I’m the greatest fuckin’ person in the world for doing this shit. I mean it. I want glowing reports out of each and every one of you, and I want a medal. A real medal, not the kind with chocolate in it, this time… So before I lift a fucking finger, I wanna hear some real hearty ‘yes sirs’!”  
  
He put a hand near his ear like he had seen Soldier 76 do when he was waiting on answers. Ganymede chirped and pecked at a twig, and Bastion uttered another garbled choking noise as a spurt of black liquid sloshed out of its neck.  
  
Grabbing the tip of his glove and pulling it off his hand, he reached to his belt, digging around in the mess inside the pouches. Finally retrieving a screwdriver and solder, he gave one last and utterly hateful look to the omnic… and got to work.

  
  
***

* * *

  
  
“Knew you’d fix the comport thingy in your chest first. Saw it when you lot would fall down in the arena and start trying to repair on the sly. Here, you deal with that shitty mess you call an arm, and I’ll pop the dent in the main chassis.”  
  
Junkrat sat in the half-melted divot in the snow, blue sparks flying from the mostly assembled Bastion. It had taken him precious daylight hours just to gather up the mess of pieces all around them, and he still didn’t think he’d found all of them. It had gone faster once he’d gotten the bot’s own repair arm working properly again. It was much quicker work for it to repair its own parts, working in awkward silence as the two worked diligently at piecing it back together. Junkrat tried to think of it as just another puzzle; just another of his stupid little engineering projects like back at home. His reputation back in Junkertown would be absolutely shot if word of him helping an omnic ever got out…  
  
Ganymede dropped a loose screw into his lap, and the junker began rapidly setting it to part of the Bastion’s knee tread-changers. Holding the screwdriver between his teeth, he occasionally stopped to moan and rub at his bad arm. The mechanical part of his arm was working well enough, but the hat he’d shoved in to staunch the blood was turning black and sticky, oversoaked. The pain was getting worse, too, never a good sign.  
  
“ _Dee-boodoo-weeweewoo_?” Bastion questioned, lifting a hesitant hand towards the wound.  
  
“Fuck off! It’s fine!” Junkrat snapped, rolling his shoulder for posterity and getting back to work on the loose odds and ends. “Since you’re feeling quite the chatterbox, how about you and Bird do something useful and tell me which way they went?”  
  
It made a grinding noise as it shifted its torso, beeping before pointing off towards the forest. “ _Weeoo-beep-booboop-dee._ ” The omnic paused before looking back towards the still-flustered Junkrat, before gesturing rather timidly towards its gun arm, still laying unattached near his knee. “ _Doodoo-beeweee_?”  
  
“No can fucking do, bot. You think I’d let you have a weapon so you can off me while I’m unawares? The guns are mine. Your ammo’s all mine too. Know why? I’m the boss, that’s what we agreed to. And since I’m the boss, I’m saying we need to get moving while I can still see shit. They went off in that direction and you’re repaired enough to move. Let’s go.” Shoving the Bastion’s gun arm into his backpack, along with the (rather heavy) load of its extra ammunition rounds, he shouldered the load with a grunt, trying to ignore the fresh wave of pain radiating from his shoulder. “I said, let’s go!”  
  
Ganymede flitted about in a little circle before alighting on his favorite perch atop Bastion’s shoulder. With a rather unpleasant scrape of metal and a quick set of adjustments, the omnic switched out to his tank treads, pausing to pop them more firmly in place before it started leading them through the rapidly darkening woods. Loaded down with the extra weight of all the weapons, and keeping an extra close eye on his robotic charge, Junkrat followed.  
  
Their progress was slow and it was getting rapidly colder. There was no sign of falling snow and the trees shielded them from the worst of the winds, but the sweat on Junkrat’s exposed head was starting to freeze solid, and the wetness of his bloody clothes did not help matters. The sky had turned orange and red, and his wound was turning black and yellow as old blood and pus started to build up on the disgusting remains of his winter hat. When he paused to take a rest, leaning up against a tree and clutching at his injured shoulder, he caught the bot occasionally stealing little hurried glances at him.  
  
Puffing himself up quickly, he pointed at his prisoner-companions. “Nothing doing! Just taking a quick break, s’all! Still full of verve and vinegar, alla that. Keep walkin’! You’re sure it was headed in this direction before you fell out?”  
  
“ _Beebeep…doo-da-da-woop-woop_?” Bastion nodded quickly, then pointed at the junker’s shoulder again.  
  
Wiping sweat from his brow, Junkrat snarled. “I’m fine! I said, keep walkin’!”  
  
Jumping a bit, Bastion shrank back and hurriedly began rolling its way through the snow. They continued on for a while in silence, as the light started to turn from orange to the gray-blue of night. And just before he was about to call it for the evening and try to find a place to make camp, he sniffed suddenly, nostrils flaring and head lifting.  
  
“Smell that?” he asked.  
  
Bastion shook its head and pointed to its lack of nose.  
  
“Iodized metal, burnt wires…This way, hurry!” And the ailing junker overtook the omnic, taking the lead as he struggled his way through the snow towards the scent. The snowy ground gave way to rock and scree, and then they broke free of the treeline completely, to a boulder-filled clearing and the charred metal skeleton of their science team van. It stood as a blackened husk, only slightly smoldering, the roof almost melted away where a trail of pulse bullets had nearly cut it in two.  Junkrat quickened his pace, eyes wide. “Fuck…fuck me! Nooo no no no, probably not still in there. Musta got out before it burned. Come on, come on, come on…”  
  
Limping rapidly towards the derelict vehicle, he crunched his way through burnt debris and scattered papers. He saw blood on the ground, and then the scattered burnt marks of ammo fired from a very familiar scrap gun. Hog had been here, and judging by the splatters of red all around, he’d given them the sort of hell that would have made Junkrat proud. But there was no sign of his bodyguard, and definitely nothing of Mei. And still nothing, when he finally reached the vehicle’s interior. No burnt bodies amongst the charred seats and melted dashboard. They’d crashed here, and there had been a struggle, but they’d been taken afterward. No way to tell if they were dead or alive.  
  
Grasping onto his tufted hair, he stomped about in a little circle as Bastion finally rolled up beside him. The frantic junker swallowed noisily, muttering curses to himself, before there was an audible tinkle and crack. Blinking, he pulled his boot from where he had been stepping on a little pile of broken glass shards. Several feet away, Mei’s shattered glasses lay in the disturbed snow. Hands shaking, he leaned down and retrieved them. Turning them from side to side, more bits of glass fell out, and he saw a bit of blood by the nose, stained darker than the rest of it. At a loss, he took the empty frames and tucked them into his belt satchel. If he found her again, maybe she’d want them back. Waste not, want not, after all.  
  
“ _WEEEET! WEEEET!_!”  
  
He jerked up when Bastion shrilled an alert, rolling up with its single hand imploringly holding up the husk of a dark-screened and deadened Snowball. Junkrat turned away from it, gnawing on the glove above his knuckles. Mei would never have gone anywhere willingly without her glasses or her annoying drone friend. Had she been caught in the crossfire between the Talon agents and Roadhog? Was any of that blood on the ground hers? Had they hurt her? Had they killed her?  
  
Bastion hunched over Snowball, cradling the drone’s burnt hull as its repair arm went to work, cutting open its hull and sending a shower of blue sparks bouncing over the rocky ground.  
  
“Yeah…Yeah, bot, you fix that thing. See if you can get it running, maybe it’ll know something.” Junkrat winced and clutched at his shoulder again, slinging off the heavy weapons bag into the remains of the van’s cargo area. Most of it was burnt out, but it still had walls and a partial ceiling. No time to focus on the what-ifs if he was going to survive a night in this frozen hellhole. The last of the sun was going down and he needed to scavenge what he could, while he could.  
  
Cracking his neck from side to side, Junkrat ignored the thousand and one thoughts ravaging through his mind at any given time, and focused on digging through the ashes of their van as night started to fall.


	7. Chapter 7

Sombra sat outside in the hall on a stack of metal crates, huddled miserably into her jacket and swinging her feet as she played on the little device held in one hand. She was feeding her pet…sort of. Pets just weren’t really something she could really invest in, with all their eating and shedding and bodily functions…She preferred the virtual kind, where you could make your pet do tricks, feed it cupcakes, and make even potty-cleaning into fun minigames. Which was what she was doing now, cleaning up virtual animal poop while the interrogation went on and on. Pursing her lips and forming an O, she pressed her gum to her teeth and blew, a hot pink bubble growing larger and larger until it reached its limit, and popped.  
  
At almost the same time, there was another sharp cracking noise from the locked room down the hall, followed by a little cry. Sombra glanced up, slowly drawing in the tangled mess that her been her bubble gum, dragging it in with her tongue as she watched the door. There was the faint sound of muffled voices once more, and she tapped at her communicator in her ear, only to be denied yet again. Reaper had turned it off some minutes ago…as though that would have stopped her. But frankly, she already knew the outcome of his little session in the makeshift questioning room.  
  
The door swung open while she still tapped away on her game, Reaper stepping through and slamming it shut behind him. With a shit-eating grin plastering itself onto her face, she slid down from her perch and followed him as he skulked down the hall. The ghostly, black-dressed man pointedly tried to ignore her, and she allowed him just a few moments of somehow equally-obnoxious silence as she trailed him, before asking loudly, “So! How did it gooooo!”  
  
The wraith snorted, though it was not steam from his breath that hit the cold air, but a faint wisp of black vapor that hissed from his mask.  
  
She tried again. “Sounded like it was a fun reunion… _Mr. Owl_.”  
  
“Don’t you have work to do somewhere else, Sombra?” he said irritably, before clicking on his communicator once more. Flicking through the channels, he found the one he was looking for. “I just finished with questioning the girl. She doesn’t know anything.”  
  
“I could have told you that, like, twenty minutes ago,” Sombra chimed in helpfully.  
  
Reaper ignored her. “It seems she started to grow a spine since I last met her, but I left her intact. Mostly. Seems she was here to investigate the missing omnics and did not expect our presence…Even accused us of being behind it. She knows nothing. Do you still want her?”  
  
Both Talon agents paused, listening, as there was a low-pitched “Hrmm,” from the other end of the line.  
  
“Would it help if I mention how cute she is?” Sombra interjected, “Can’t we keep her? Look, my only cute friend here is my virtual pet, don’t you think that’s a little depressing? I think with a little persuasion she could still be a good resource. And again, adorability factors are through the roof.”  
  
The other voice did not seem to pay her suggestion much mind. She could hear the shuffling of papers before it responded a few moments later, “A good resource. I take it that you still have not been able to track down where they have sequestered the climate expedition’s research, then.”  
  
“Umm, still working on that, actually,” she said quickly, eyes darting just a bit when she heard Reaper start to chuckle. “Maybe if someone hadn’t failed on that physical extraction of important data?” She smirked when Reaper’s chuckle died away. “Not to put blame on anyone for that little debacle, of course. But now we have one of the sources, one of the survivors. Combined with what we can learn here? I know you like changing the world, right boss?”  
  
That seemed to work a little better than her appeals for the woman’s cuteness. He ‘hrrm’d once more, and again there was the sound of papers and a pause for thinking. After another few moments, he responded. “I will come and take a look, for myself. She may be worth salvaging, or…’convincing’ her to join us. What of the mercenary?”  
  
“The pig junker,” Reaper said, “is still alive. Though not for lack of trying, with him trying to attack his guards. I say we just give them the order to put him down on the next attempt.”  
  
“Keep him as leverage, for now. If she refuses us, kill him in front of her. What of the others she brought with her? Have their fatalities been confirmed?”  
  
“The other mercenary and an old bastion unit were recorded falling from the ship after several strikes. I can send the footage to-”  
  
“Send someone out to confirm them. I’m tired of slip-ups.”  
  
“Understood...”  
  
The comm was cut off, and Reaper was already plodding away. Sombra scowled after him, then glanced downward as she saw very faint movement. A look of disgust crossed her face, wrinkling her nose at the droplets of red that were still being shed from the tips of his clawed gloves.  
  
“ _Dios mio_ , Gabe, really? Is that completely necessary? What did she do, kick your puppy back when you knew her in the old days?”  
  
“Doing my job, Sombra. Like you might consider doing yours, for once. Call it…a form of persuasion. Besides, Zhou has a bit more to worry about than a few superficial cuts. Akande said he wanted to meet with her and finally decide what we’re going to do with her and the swine. Overwatch still has no idea what kind of research she’s been sitting on. And if she can’t be of use to Talon’s future, there’s no reason to leave her alive so she can help them with it. No matter how _cute_ you think she is…”  
  
Sombra made a face at him but did not follow. Once he had turned the corner out of the cramped little hallway, she looked back towards the little meeting room and its locked door. Even as she watched, she heard the knob rattle and the door shake as the woman inside tried to get out again. Shaking her head, she pressed her gum flat to the backs of her teeth, forming another O with her lips. Another pink bubble blew outward, and then popped.  
  
By the time the sound had finished echoing down the frozen corridor, she shimmered with a faint purple light that quickly faded away, and was gone.  
  
***

* * *

  
  
Mei knew better than to get blood on her hands. If she allowed her gloves to get wet, her extremities would be even more at risk for frostbite. So she sat with the edge of her fluffy coat pulled up, holding it to the side of her head with only one eye peeking out to watch the door. Her face was starting to swell a bit and there were several gashes and cuts where the ghastly man’s spikes and claws had struck her the worst, including one by her ear that was bleeding profusely and might need stitches…The blows to the gut and one to the chest had fared a little better, where she had been more padded, but they had knocked the breath from her lungs and sent her flying against the wall more than once.  
  
And still didn’t know any more than when she had been thrown in this stupid, weird little conference room, however many hours ago. Every time she tried to ask questions or challenged him for answers, he had simply struck her with no hesitation. He spoke like someone who was overly familiar with Overwatch, and definitely had a vendetta against them…and for some reason, her. He kept speaking of ‘old days’, even if she could not entirely understand what he meant. And her attempts to find out had left her battered and bruised for her troubles.  
  
But after she cried out, again and again, that she was here to help the omnics and to please give her her teammates back, he had finally seemed to grow bored with her and had simply gotten up and left, just as abruptly as he had come. The door locked behind him, and she was alone again, though a little more worse for wear.  
  
She winced a little as she wiped at another oozing trickle of red, the bottom fur of her coat now stained and dirty. If they were being that rough to her, she couldn’t help but worry over the state of Roadhog. He had managed to kill several of their number already, and she doubted he would be treated kindly. The picture quality had not been the greatest when the Reaper had shown him being held captive…but it looked like there was a lot of blood on the floor. Roadhog’s blood. And though she knew the old junker was tough, he was not immortal. They might have been torturing him further even while she lingered in this damn office.  
  
It was a strange idea to be holding her prisoner in an office at all. Where on earth were they? Perhaps they had simply not been expecting company and had no proper jail cells or other places to hold her. Or perhaps they had wanted to separate her and Roadhog and had relegated the weaker of the two to…whatever this was. But maybe if she could get out of here and reach him somehow, or find out what this place was, or make an escape to search for Bastion and Jamison out in the miles and miles of frozen Canadian wilderness… Her heart dropped a little, but she tried not to think about their odds. They were still counting on her as their team leader, and she wasn’t going to give up on them. So she tried the door again, and rattled and kicked it with all her might, in hopes that it might start to give way.  
  
And that was when her sweater started ringing obnoxiously, with the tinny sounds of what sounded like a series of car horns playing ‘La Cucaracha’. Wincing, she reached into her bra and quickly retrieved it, if only to make the noise stop, flicking it on and holding it to her ear. “Hello? Sombra?”  
  
“Hey! See, that one got your attention a lot quicker, always does. Haha! So listen, babe, I have some good news and I have some bad news.”  
  
Mei scowled into the receiver. “Don’t call me that. Don’t call me anything. I don’t know what Talon is up to, but you and your-”  
  
“Okay. Okay, for the record, I did not condone the whole ‘punching-you’ thing. What do you take me for, some kind of crazy person? Actually, don’t bother answering that, because you’ve got bigger problems headed your way.”  
  
She rubbed at her still swollen cheek. “What? Why? I already told him, I’m here to find the missing-”  
  
“You see, that’s actually the bad news. It’s not really Mr. Owl-Reaper anymore. You’re going to be a bit, erm…let’s say, _upgraded_ , hostage-wise.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
“That puts you in a bit more of a precarious position, the kind where you live or you die. He can do that. The good news is that he’s a very busy man, so you might have a while before he bothers with you. So, now’s your chance! This phone isn’t very good, but I can get a few files to you without being noticed. You see? I’m not a monster, cutie. I’m going to do my best to help you, and then you’re going to do your best to help me. You and me, we’re going to be besties, Mei-Ling. All right, I’m sending you a map of the facility. It has the supply room, the piggy prison, and where you can meet up with me, all laid out.”  
  
Mei looked down as her phone chimed. There on the screen, just like the strange woman had said, was a little scrolling map of whatever building they were in, with little white sugar skulls on some of the rooms, and a blue line that marked a path to follow.  
  
She frowned at it. “What kind of building is this? Can you at least tell me where we are? Please?”  
  
“Heh, Mr. Owl didn’t really feel like telling you much, did he? Long story short, this used to be a research facility of a very, very specific kind. But it’s been abandoned for a long time. Something happened here, and it got buried. Very, very well buried. But now it’s awake, and starting to draw attention to itself. We just happened to notice it first. Spooky, right?” Sombra snapped her gum and laughed. “Bad luck for you, though. This was going to be a quick little ‘get in, get out’ operation, my favorite kind…but then you showed up, and that means Overwatch won’t be far behind you.”  
  
“But if you’re not the one who has been kidnapping the omnics here, then who? And what’s infected my friend, Bastion?”  
  
“This place. In its own way, I mean. Come on, Mei-Ling, you of all people should know that strange things can happen in creepy old research labs.”  
  
“But what kind of facility is this? What kind of research?”  
  
Sombra began chuckling strangely. “Heh! Hehehe! Th-that’s actually the funny part! But it’s really one of those ‘You gotta be there’ jokes, so, I’ll tell you when you get here so you can really appreciate it, sound good?”  
  
“I…I guess?…Can you please let me out, now? Please, I’m really worried about Mr. Roadhog, I have to find him.”  
  
“Awww! Isn’t that sweet!”  
  
Mei squinted at the phone again. The woman spoke so quickly and casually, but so vaguely, she couldn’t tell what was sarcastic and what wasn’t. So she just tried again. “Please?”  
  
“Sorry, pobrecita, no can do. I’m about to be on the clock. But hey, got you a map. You’re supposed to be resourceful, I’m sure you can figure a way out of there. See you soon, I hope!”  
  
“Wait! Would you please stop hanging up on-”  
  
The phone clicked.  
  
“…me…” Mei finished glumly.  
  
She snapped the old phone shut and resolutely stuffed it back into her bra, trying to think. Sombra was clearly impossible to trust, much less rely on, but if she just was able to get out of this room, she might stand a chance with that map that the mysterious hacker had given her. But how to get out? Her hands were still bound together and she had no equipment. She was a skilled engineer, to be sure…but there was nothing here to engineer with? If only Junkrat was here…He had more of a head for things like this, and was his own strange brand of genius inventor, able to make things out of nothing. He probably would have rigged something up and escaped within the first twenty minutes of the door shutting…  
  
So, what would Junkrat do in a situation like this one?  
  
Her first thought was to just start setting things on fire, which (although that probably would have been the first thing Rat thought of as well) would only fill the room with deadly smoke and probably kill her. And the question of no matches or materials for fire. That was right out. She couldn’t solder anything together, either, and the door was locked from the outside, so no mechanism to try and overload. There were no chemicals or things to make chemicals, and the only source of power was-  
  
She glanced up. The single light above the conference table still flashed and flickered in the most irritating way. It was as old-fashioned as everything else around here, a large circular fixture above the table and decades out of date. It was amazing it was working at all... She pushed her glasses back up her nose, lips screwing to one side thoughtfully, in almost the same way that Junkrat always looked when he was trying to concentrate. Well, it was worth a shot.  
  
Awkwardly picking up one of the chairs with her cuffed hands, she huffed a bit as she hefted it up above her head and then onto the table. Still not tall enough. Scrambling down from her perch, she busily began shifting the conference chairs up onto the table, one after the other, until she could climb up after them and start stacking them again there. Curse being so short! Without one of the junkers to lift her up, she was left to the mercy of her pile of furniture. It wobbled dangerously as she cautiously climbed up onto it, resting on her knees for a few moments before she had the courage to stand. Shifting her weight carefully, she reached up with both hands and tried to pry at the light fixture.  
  
“Come on, come on…”  
  
For a moment it didn’t budge, and then dust rained down on her as she looked up, nearly sending her tumbling as she coughed wildly and wiped her glasses on her sleeve. Waving away the cloud of gray, she grabbed onto the fixture once more, and then twisted with all her might. The rusted metal screeched, and she winced as she paused to make sure nobody had heard. Taking a breath, she twisted again, the plastic cover starting to crack from sheer age as she pried it loose, laying heavy in her arms as she let it drop down with a crash.  
  
There! There was a hole in the ceiling, with wires hanging down to power the bare, hanging lightbulbs. It wasn’t a hole a human could get through, but the ceiling around it was crumbling with age and moisture, and she wondered if she could widen it. Wobbling back up to her full height, she reached into her coat and pulled out her pin, tilting it with the sharp end down as she began hacking away at loose plaster. Puncturing it at weak points and cracks, it began to come apart in chunks, showering her with more dust and white powder. Stifling her coughing fits and blinking behind her glasses, she finally pried off a large chunk of ceiling until she see the support beam above.  
  
This was not going to be easy, but she had no choice. With her hands tied, she couldn’t really brace herself to climb up, so she tried the next best thing. Lifting up to her feet on the shaky tower of chairs, she braced herself and gathered what little power she had in her short legs…and jumped, launching up and off the pile as best she could. Up she went, slamming chest-first into the beam and managing to hook both elbows over it. It left her lower half dangling perilously from the ceiling, both feet kicking wildly to try and use momentum to swing herself up just enough to…yes!…she managed to hook one ankle up onto the beam, huffing and puffing as she finally scrambled up the rest of the way into the hole in the ceiling.  
  
Coughing again and waving away more dust and plaster, she rested on her knees and scrambled to pull out Sombra’s phone, clicking on the light. 2:28 AM and she had managed to finally leave her makeshift prison, up into the plenum, the narrow crawlspace made for the pipes and ducts and wiring of…whatever this place was. She pulled up the map, her lighting up eerily blue as she inspected the path through the building. Shoving the phone between her lips for now, trying to use it as a mouth-aimed flashlight, she was reduced to a very slow shuffle, crawling on belly with her bound hands and knees as she made her way below the air ducts and vents, towards what she hoped was a hallway.  
  
A little surge of hope and adrenaline kept her going, crawling and crawling, trying not to breathe in the rotten mold smell of the crumbling, decaying structure around her. Several times she felt the ceiling start to give way out form under her, slithering around them until finally she saw the divider walls up ahead, and she cautiously crept forward, carefully peeling up one of the ceiling panels next to her and peeking downward. It was dark, but she could make out more dirty linoleum and part of a wall. No voices, so she shunted the panel aside fully, and dropped down with a little thud.  
  
Straightening up slowly and spitting the phone back into her hands, she found herself in an unfamiliar corridor; a dark hall with a row of dark doors. But up ahead there was light streaming in, and the hall was choked with snow from what must have been a collapsed wall or a broken window. That explained the chill…the barriers between the indoors and the outdoors were starting to break down.  
  
Her phone dinged, and that white and purple sugar skull appeared on the screen.  
  
_2:34 AM: LOL grats!!! I knew you could do it, friendo. Guards seem to have had schedule conflict. Weird! See you soon. XOXOXO_  
  
With no way to message her back- which was probably for the best, with her frazzled temper- she just scowled down at the device and slipped forward once more. No doubt that Sombra was tracking her through the phone, and for a moment she considered throwing it away. But it was her only source of light and navigation right now, and so far the hacker hadn’t tried hurting her. Not that Sombra could be trusted, but at the moment all she had to rely on was the whims of an incredibly smug and self-serving Talon agent. And that did not sit well with her.  
  
The map was telling her to go forward, so she trudged through the piled snow by the broken windows, pausing to look out. It looked out into some bleak white-covered courtyard, now lit with blinding lights and filled with several transports and various squadrons of gun-toting Talon agents, some chatting with each other or huddled around sources of warmth. No going out that way. Ducking back down quickly, she crept along the moldy corridor of Office Block C on the map, following the blue line leading her towards the ‘piggy prison’ marked quite some distance away.  
  
_Dee-doo-da-da-dooooo….Dee-doo-da-da-doooooo…._  
  
Very faintly, she heard something familiar, so familiar it made her stop and lift her head towards the sound. That sounded an awful lot like…Bastion? No, not Bastion, it was too high pitched and different, but it was definitely familiar. It was the song, the same song that she’d heard it singing over and over again. Being played by something else.  
  
_Dee-doo-da-da-dooooo…._  
  
Curiosity peaked, she slipped off the marked path and headed towards it. There, in what looked like a break room with decrepit snack machines and sagging shelves, was a single red light in the darkness. As she watched, the red light backed up, then barged forward, hitting the wall with a little thump. Cautiously bringing her flashlight up, Mei saw what looked like…a cleaner bot? An old fashioned cleaner model from some decades back, little more than an oval on wheels, with scrawny mechanical arms for cleaning and dusting as it puttered around, vacuuming and shining the floors. This one seemed a little out of sorts. Though its hull was corroded and rusted in places, it was still semi-functional, and its single red light blinked a bit as it backed up…and then slammed itself into the wall, playing its song again.  
  
_Dee-doo-da-da-doooo…._  
  
It backed up, and then ran into the wall yet again. Mei tilted the light down…and saw the the wall was cracked and dented, little spiderweb-like crackles fanning out in the plaster away  from the point of impact, and there was a sizable divot and bare spot on the floor where it had worn through the linoleum and into the dirty concrete, directly under the cleaner’s path. That little singing cleaner bot…must have been slamming into that wall for years now, maybe decades. Trying to get through the barrier and beeping that song, over and over and over again.  
  
Pity swept through her, but she bit her lip hard and very slowly shut the door again. It would do no good to draw attention to herself now. As much as she wanted to help the poor thing, she had no idea what was making it malfunction like that, or what was making it play the same song that had Bastion had started singing months ago. It made her skin prickle eerily, just the thought of it. Wondering how Bastion was faring without her, she clicked the door shut softly and left the singing bot back to the uncaring darkness.  
  
It was some sort of virus, it must have been. Maybe this facility researched viruses? Although, how would a virus reach a Bastion unit on the other side of the world, she had no idea. And now poor Bastion was probably ‘infected’ like Sombra had said, and there was nobody out there to help it…or well, Junkrat was still out there. But her heart sank even more at that thought. Jamison’s hatred for omnics still burned as white-hot as it always had, and none of her attempts had helped. Bastion might have been in more danger than ever if the junker found him first…  
  
She shook her head clear quickly. No. Try not to think about that. They both still needed her help out there, and so did Roadhog…and she didn’t even know where Snowball might be. Couldn’t think about it, couldn’t panic. She needed to keep moving.  
  
There was the sound of footsteps echoing on the floor up ahead, and she ducked behind a doorframe quickly, pressing herself into the little space as a flashlight swept over where she had once stood. The sound of garbled communicators and soft conversation faded away, and she huddled into her coat and ran across what might have once been an atrium; now a cold concrete dome with no windows and little more than a few desks shoved to the sides, papers and debris and what looked like…were those wheel tracks? There was a path going through the place, like many foot prints and wheels and metal parts had taken the same way through, down the hall…  
  
Which was exactly where she was headed, wishing her boots were a little quieter as she made a dash across the lobby-looking area and hunkered down behind the check-in structure in the middle. There was an old phone here, but no power, and numerous spilled pens and scattered paperwork lay everywhere in piles of reeking rot and mildew. Placing an arm over her nose, she illuminated a nearby folder that was sitting nearby, leaning to cautiously peel it open.  
  
It was waterlogged, but she could make out the logo at the top. ‘Tolva Applied Technology’…  
  
Nothing she had ever heard of, and how strange for such a facility to be out here in the middle of nowhere. What had Sombra said about this place? That it had been buried, and now it was waking up? That sounded more than a little ominous, even considering the source. Like everything else around here, the hacker had not been very forthcoming, but hopefully if she was able to meet with her (and it wasn’t all a trap) she might finally start to uncover some answers. Glancing about, she tore off the logo and stuck it into her coat. This ‘Tolva’ needed to be looked into, but only after she found the rest of her team.  
  
Lifting back up, she made another little dash into the hallway across the atrium, which looked completely identical and just as decrepit as the hallway she had come from. But she was that much closer to the place that was marked with Roadhog’s whereabouts. Even though that path was leading her directly into a pitch-black and half-collapsed stairwell, its surface slicked over from ice and moisture as she descended. Somewhere underground now, as best she could figure.  
  
Setting her shoulder against a door that was frozen shut, she pushed with all her might until it gave, tumbling into another hallway. This one had a few lights working, at least, though all it did was illuminate a long, lonely stretch of hall with yet more closed doors. And it was no warmer here than it was in the half-crumbled rooms exposed to the elements.  
  
_Dee-doo-da-da-dooooo…_  
  
There was that song again, coming from what must have been another bot somewhere in another room.  
  
Like before, it made her shudder. Whatever this Tolva was about, she did not like it. She did not like it at all. Everything was creepy and weird and she was completely on her own…It reminded her of the base back in Antarctica, a little. Everything was so cold, and everything that wasn’t already dead was dying…Even Snowball would be gone soon, and then it would just be her…Long, lonely halls filled with corpses, just like before…Cold and dark and alone and nobody knew and nobody was coming for her…She had failed and everyone she loved had paid the price…  
  
***

* * *

  
  
She froze, expression going lax as she just stood there, staring blankly ahead into space. With no warmth to wrap itself around her, no teeth on her ear or lips on her neck, nothing to bring her back, she got a little lost. Wandering the frozen corridors in her mind instead of the facility, she just stood there for…she wasn’t sure how long, staring off into the nothingness, though the moisture in her eyes froze before they could fully form into tears.  
  
Her phone beeped aloud. Once. Twice. Three times. She didn’t answer, didn’t even seem to hear it.  
  
Until ‘La Cucaracha’ started blaring from its speakers again, and she physically jumped as her consciousness seemed to return all at once. Completely befuddled, she shook herself back awake and looked down at her phone. There was a stream of messages from several minutes ago.  
  
_3:20 AM: Keep moving_  
  
_3:20 AM: KEEP MOVING_  
  
_3:22 AM: What is the hold up here omfg ಠ_ಠ_  
  
_3:25 AM: OOOOMMMMFFFFFGGGGGG （╯°□°）╯︵( .o.)_  
  
_3:27 AM: They’re heading out to find you right now_  
  
_3:29 AM: The alert is out_  
  
_3:29 AM: Hide_  
  
Mei stared down at it blankly for a few moments before realization dawned. And from the floors up above, she was fairly certain she heard a faint alarm going off, and very muffled shouting. Oh no. Oh no, no no no…  
  
She’d wasted precious time on one of her silly little daydreams and had just sat there lingering like an idiot, and now they were alerted to her missing. And no doubt they would expect her to be trying to rescue Roadhog, which…she was. Hide. She had to hide, just like Sombra had said. Shoving the phone back into her bra, she ran blindly forward, trying doorknobs as she went, just as she heard the sound of voices and the slam of a door from up above in the stairwell.  
  
Locked. Locked. Locked. Everything she tried was locked, until she found a door that wasn’t, and went barging into…a bathroom? A cold, crumbling bathroom filled with shattered porcelain and ceramics, and tile that would echo every sound she made. But there was no time to be picky with them right on her tail. She could try hiding in what was left of the stalls, maybe? Or…No, there! In the corner of the bathroom, a wall had started to come down, scattering tiles everywhere, and the air vent had come down with it. It lay gaping open, the cover twisted and bent on the floor, and the yawning darkness looked almost welcoming in her predicament.  
  
Hoisting herself up, she went scrambling into the vent, hefting herself up the little incline and feeling it bow dangerously under her weight before she scooted the rest of the way in. Just in time, it seemed, as she heard the voices of the Talon agents sound right outside, and what might have been the sounds of doors being forced and broken open as they looked for her. Huddling herself in the stifling darkness, she clamped both gloves over her mouth, as she heard the bathroom door slam open as well. She couldn’t see anything, but heard the noises echoing around the room, hopefully drowning out the thundering drum of her pounding heart.  
  
She could almost see their actions, though, checking for feet and then kicking open the stall doors, one after another. She held her breath, listening to the deep, garbled static of their communicators, obscuring their voices into a deep threatening droning sound. She kept expecting them to get closer, to poke around the dilapidated corner where she had fled, and to have a light suddenly shine right into her face… But after a long moment’s pause, she heard the door slam again and the voices went muffled and far away.  
  
Uttering a long and shuddering sigh, she gulped in air and went onto her hands and knees. She knew that no matter how the movies portrayed them, trying to move around too much in the air vents would be a fool’s venture. Air vents were twisted, cramped, constantly changing things, and she had to stifle a yelp as her knee moved over the sharp, razor-like edge where two vents had been connected together. No matter how she held her breath now, every little movement caused a banging metallic sound and it was all she could do to shuffle along awkwardly without trying to lift her limbs too much. But if she could just follow this one to wherever the other side was…or find an opening somewhere, maybe she could make another break for it.  
  
Pulling out the phone and clicking on the light, she shuffled along very slowly and awkwardly, heading for a bend where the vent split into two paths. No map would help with this one, but…maybe if she chose left, it would lead her further away instead of back to the hall? So she took it, and headed for what she hoped was an exit.  
  
Panting and sweating now despite her best efforts, gulping in the stale air, she continued on. Until she heard what sounded like a faint noise that echoed so strangely around the enclosed metal tubes that she couldn’t even tell which way it had come from. Gasping, unable to look behind her, she sped up, ignoring the banging noises her bleeding knees made for her efforts. The noise came again, a hissing, shuffling, whooshing sound. It echoed around her, getting closer, but now she was pretty sure it was…coming from up ahead?  
  
She shone the light forward into the darkness, and as the sound grew louder, suddenly the darkness moved. It surged forward like a living thing, a mist coalescing out of the shadows and sweeping towards her like a swarm. She couldn’t help it. She screamed, and scrambled to back up, but there would be no fleeing. Swirling and churning, it slammed into her with a force that she did not expect, that no mist should have had. Enveloping her in choking darkness, it dragged her, beating and battering her with every move she tried to make, sending her crashing repeatedly into the walls, floor, and ceiling of the metal, until she no longer knew which way was up or which way she was going. She was swept along, blinding her to everything except the pain blossoming all over her as she tried to go fetal and protect herself from any more…  
  
And then they shot free of the vents altogether, through another opening somewhere, and Mei was thrown from the black cloud and fell hard onto her chest. The force of it knocked the air from her lungs and she coughed painfully, too stunned to move as she lay prone on her belly on the dirty floor of wherever she’d ended up this time. She could make out radio chatter around her…and then the black cloud came together in front of her, in the narrow strip of vision she had, and solidified into a familiar pair of leather and metal boots.  
  
“Poor move, Zhou,” came the rattling, guttural tones of the Reaper. “Poor. Move.”  
  
She couldn’t answer. There was no air to answer with.  
  
There was more movement, a pair of footsteps landing heavily on the other side of her. They sounded…solid. Even heavier than Reaper’s, maybe almost as heavy as Roadhog.  
  
“Hm. Almost impressive, for such a little one…but ultimately, a waste of both our times.” The other voice that came from up above her was different, yet strangely familiar. It was deep and thrumming, with a rich accent and kept low and eerily calm. She’d heard it before, on transmissions and vids and intelligence briefings.  
  
She heard Reaper grumble. “What should we do with her?”  
  
The rich voice chuckled humorlessly. “We’ve caught our mouse and I have a moment. Well, Miss Zhou. You’ve my undivided attention…”  
  
She coughed and rolled slowly onto her knees and elbows, with her glasses askew and eyes wide as she looked up into the very unamused features of Akande Ogundimu... the man who had been named the new Doomfist.  
  
“Let’s hope you use it wisely…”


	8. Chapter 8

Bastion trilled a beeping tune of triumph as it connected the last of the wires on the drone’s fried undercarriage.  
  
Snowball’s visor flickered, its charging-up bars lighting up one by one. Its screen flashed several times, then it hovered upright and shook itself back and forth a bit, emoticon eyes blinking open. It seemed a bit stunned for a moment, its memory systems still rebooting, before it began blaring an alarm and rapidly shooting back and forth around the burnt-out van, looking behind pieces of twisted metal and pointing its searchlights into the wreckage. Clearly seeking Mei, it did not find her. Instead it found Junkrat, who was busy prying a charred seat out from the front of the crashed science team transport.  
  
Immediately it paused, before its eyes narrowed and it angrily advanced upon him, screen starting to flash with threatening-looking hanzi symbols. It stopped only when there was a clank, and it found the edge of a grenade launcher jammed into its metal bottom. Snowball froze, looking down at it, then up at the man holding it. Junkrat, looking positively deranged with blood and ash still smeared all over him, leaned forward and kept his voice low.  
  
“I’m gonna say this one time and one time only, bot. You’re gonna make yourself useful and tell us what happened here, maybe point us in a direction, and then I’m off to find Mei. Or, you wanna fight with me…” His eyes lit up, looking almost radioactive yellow and a little bloodshot on the edges. “Then yeah, I’ll fight ya. And this time, she ain’t here to stop what I’ll do to ya. So! What’s it gonna be! You wanna be helpful? …Or not?”  
  
“ _Dee-doot-weet-wee_!” Bastion raised its single hand fretfully, motioning for them both to stop. It tried taking a step forward, but found the grenade launcher shifting to point at it as well, and stopped with the remains of its arms in the air. Instead it turned to Snowball, eyelight blinking in a somewhat pleading way.  
  
Snowball looked a bit conflicted, but faltered quickly. With a worried look and an animated sweatdrop, it dropped down and back, away from the junker, before fleeing over to hide behind Bastion. The omnic patted the top of the little drone in a seemingly comforting way as the two exchanged clicks and beeps.  
  
“I know you’re talkin’ bout me! Shut it! Goddamn bots,” Junkrat snapped, before turning back to the remains of the seat. Flicking open a utility knife, he slammed it down perhaps a little too eagerly, ripping it through the upholstery in a clean line. Pulling the stuffing out, he gathered it into a little pile, keeping it dry and out of the wind. He needed to hurry. Mei had said that the lights went out early in the north, and the trees would blot out the moon. Fucking awful stuff, these icy wildernesses, he had no idea why she liked this kind of thing.  
  
“BigBot!” he shrilled, causing Bastion to look around in a confused way before it pointed to itself in question. Rat snorted. “Yeah, you! Stop sittin’ there and go find some dry wood! None of the wet stuff, don’t want it smoky. Gonna need lots to feed it, too. Fuckin’ shit, it’s already so cold, how do people even live here? Okay, what were we- Yeah, BigBot! Go on! Chop chop!” He paused to wipe at the sweat beading on his forehead. He felt ill and clammy, and the pain radiating from the wound in his shoulder showed no signs of abating. Drooping visibly, he leaned against the side of the van, voice cracking. “Hog! Hog, mate, get the thing for the stuff!”  
  
Bastion paused, looking around unsurely before offering a questioning beep.  
  
Junkrat looked about a little blearily before shaking his head. “Oh, riiiight! Roadhog’s gone too, right, right. Yeah, s’just me and the scrapheap rejects tonight. BigBot! I said to get wood! Snowbot, go…I dunno, scan the perimeter or something. Make yourself useful or stay the hell outta my way!”  
  
The little drone flashed more rude hanzi symbols at him, and stopped only when Bastion reached out and pleadingly tried urging it backwards.  
  
Junkrat merely sneered at them both. “See? At least BigBot knows the rub. Put up or blow up, that’s how things go here. You’re lucky you’re not a pile of scrap right now, the both of ya. I told her, nothing good comes from anything involving you lot! I tried to tell her! I tried!”  
  
“ _Deet-deet-doo…_ ”  
  
“I said shut up! Shouldn’t even have come out here, I knew it. I tell you, if it weren’t for my soft and tender heart, wouldn’t even be in this mess. Shoulda put my foot down! Shoulda put Roadie’s foot down, it’s even bigger and he’s got two of ‘em! Because now, instead of rooting my girl’s brains out in a nice cozy bed, she and my best mate are gone, the ship’s blowed to hell, and I’m stuck in the fucking woods…and it ain’t the radiation or the bounty hunters or even a rogue boom what’ll end up killing me, like I always thought, turns out I’m gonna freeze to death!” He whirled on them both, his bad arm flopping limply. “Me! Junkrat! I’m gonna freeze to death! I’m gonna curl up on the ground in the ice, and I’m gonna die like an animal out in the goddamn snow in the goddamn woods. Not gonna go out with a bang, nope. Here I am! Gonna die all quiet-like, with you watching me with your shitty emotionless lightbulb eyes. Because you’re just a pair! OF FUCKING! BOTS!”  
  
His voice became a shrill roar by the end and he turned, rather foolishly punching his remaining good hand into the side of the ruined van. It hurt his knuckles, so he turned his wrath onto the remains of the burnt seat back, viciously kicking it several times until his his head spun and his balance was thrown off. He fell back onto his ass, cushioned by the layered pants and long underwear, and ended his outburst with one final rattling shriek of frustrated rage.  
  
Snowball made another angry face, but Bastion shook its head quickly, motioning for the drone to follow as it began to clank off into the woods. Ganymede, perched on its shoulder, turned back to watch the junker as he nearly collapsed into the snow several times, trying to pry apart two pieces of metal with one arm with the other hanging nearly useless. The omnic, drone, and bird team vanished into the trees, and Junkrat continued his work as best he could.  
  
Good fucking riddance. Like he cared if they even came back or not…Well, the bird maybe. If the bird came back, maybe he could at least get a meal in.  
  
Rather dire damn straits, these were. The tree limb had kept him from splattering on the ground outright, but had instead skewered him like a kebab, ripping through meat and muscle and rupturing veins and tissue. He could feel the infection raging inside it, something primal and dangerous and black creeping and bubbling its way outward from the wound, trying to get to his heart. Blood poisoning, s’what it was. Sure did feel poisonous. He’d felt it before, right before he’d lost his leg and his arm. And really, he’d been lucky, then! Limbs could be chopped off and replaced, with beauties like his homemade prosthetics. Hack one off, pop another on. But this wasn’t just something he could lop off and be done with. Too far into his ribs and too deep to cut off, and that was bad.  
  
He’d expected this to be a bad trip from the beginning, of course. Bots were involved and Mei had never been able to understand that nothing good could come from robots what thought they were people. Humans were humans. They might have metal limbs or cybernetic eyes or robotic bits to pump their blood for them, but they were still human. Bots, though? Bots were metal, unfeeling, monstrous things that brought destruction wherever they went. And like the shite things they were, they weren’t even truly sentient enough to _enjoy_ the destruction they caused, which made it even worse and just soured the whole thing. They deserved what was coming to them.  
  
And now that’s what he was stuck with. His best girl and his best mate were gone off together, and he was left in the cold with an omnic and that damned annoying drone. Because of course.  
  
The infection roiled inside him, as did his anger. Fire raged through him, burning at both ends, frantic and hungry as always. It consumed, as every fire did, his brain cooking in the pain of his skull and leaving only crisp and burned meat full of bad ideas, the smoke fogging his senses. Mei wasn’t here to cool him down, to help control the burn and help call him back through the black soot that covered his mind. Hog wasn’t here to patiently keep him out of the trouble that always found him. Instead he struggled, alone, trying to stay on task even though his mind was screaming in frustrated rage. Anger and infection, that’s what he burned with. And neither of those would keep him warm.  
  
He dug through another burnt section by the driver’s seat area, and his metal fingers hit something that didn’t crumble into ash at his touch. Snagging onto it, he dragged it out from the rest of the debris, turning his head to and fro as he tried to discern what it was. A little rectangular box, half burnt up. Brushing away the burnt bits, he thought he could make out a cross on the front. Medical supplies? If the fucking medical supplies had survived, maybe his luck was changing!  
  
He popped one of the hinges, slamming it onto a hard edge, and it opened. Inside was a mess; mostly burnt remains of bandages and adhesives, and things he couldn’t even recognize. Nothing to be used. He felt his heart sink again, and sifted through it just to be sure. There, on the unburnt side, he found one charred and damaged but mostly-whole biotic field dispenser. Part of it had started to melt from the inferno that had burnt up the van, but perhaps he could jostle it into working order?  
  
He pressed the activator. Nothing. Throwing aside everything else, he rummaged in his weapons bag and pulled out his tools, selecting one of the smaller screwdrivers. Snapping loose the button panel, he began to swiftly dismantle the wiring mechanism, loosening the case, and prying loose the actual payload…though he sucked in an audible breath of disappointment when he did so. Though he had managed to extract the most precious part of it- a container of concentrated biotic compound- he saw that the nozzle had melted and dented in. The connector where it went through the disperser and was loosed into the air was damaged beyond repair…and raw biotic compound in this form was dangerous stuff. Concentrated to this liquid density, it could pack enough of a punch that it could melt flesh just as easily as mend it. He’d seen it firsthand.  
  
He was left with a potent healing agent that he could hold in his very hand, not so far away from the rapidly worsening hole in his shoulder…and no way to use it safely.  
  
“…FUCK!”  
  
He almost threw it, but forced himself to keep relatively calm, merely squeezing it and uttering a very long exhale. Would be stupid to fossick out the only restorative thing in the place, only to ruin it, and then die and never see his mates again. Still had his brain bits mostly all in place, not at a breaking point yet. So he put it aside and continued to rummage as the sun went down.

* * *

  
  
It didn’t matter much to him, but the bots eventually returned. Bastion was carrying stacks upon stacks of broken wood and branches, neatly sorted out and carried in its only working arm, in the crevice between its useless turret and its main chassis, and on both shoulders. Clanking with loud mechanical steps across the frozen ground, the omnic saw that the transport had been jury-rigged into a crude shelter of sorts. Though half burnt and collapsed in the back, the junker had ripped off both front doors and jammed them into the back to block out the cold, and the strung-together remains of charred cloth from the seats and bags made a poor attempt at a roof. But the junker himself was nowhere in sight.  
  
Dropping off the wood, they found Junkrat out of the transport and down the hill, desperately making snowmen with his grenade launcher hanging on his back. His bad arm was hanging limply by now, all but useless; a stump with a dead metal weight still attached. His hair was more mussed than usual and his forehead was shiny with sweat, a bad sign in this rapidly worsening cold. He was frantically trying to pat snow into place on the enormous lumps by the edge of the forest, talking rapidly to himself the entire time and occasionally giggling. Bastion tilted its head and looked at Snowball, who responded with a series of scrolling question marks and beeped aloud. Even Ganymede, still huddled under Bastion’s hat, peeked out to see the commotion.  
  
The near-delirious junker turned on the group, before gesturing his good hand to the lumpy mounds of snow next to him.  
  
“Well if it isn’t the Scrapheap Rejects, back from the business! Took you lot long enough. Didn’t think you’d be back at all if ya had any sort of brains, but nothing doing! I made myself some new pals in the meantime, see? Now lookit this. This is Snowhog!” He patted the biggest snowman fondly, which bore a huge round body and a comically tiny head on top, two holes punched into a snowy snout and shards of broken glass for eyes. “Stalwart, wouldn’t you say?”  
  
Bastion looked at it and nodded agreeably. “ _Deet doot._ ”  
  
“Yeah, ain’t he just? And this!” He launched nearby, patting more snow onto a much smaller but much lumpier figure next to it. There had been some attempt at a face, with a lopsided smile, and a ball on top that must have represented a bun, and a familiar pair of broken glasses had been buried into its face by its two rocky eyes. “This here’s my new Snowmei. Nice girl, she is, totally sweet as…but a little _frigid_ , eh? Heh, get it? Hold on, she still ain’t true to life yet. Uh…needs more…” He reached down and picked up another handful of snow, patting it onto the already comically large bulge of the Snowmei’s bosom. “Yeah! There she is! Much better, eh?”  
  
The omnic looked a bit more unsure at that, tilting its head and uttering a warbling noise.  
  
“Pbffft, like a metal abomination like you would even understand. You’ve never been face first between a pair of tits as perfect as hers! S’like, all warm and cozy in there. Could just drown in there, die a happy man! Not that you’d know. Probably a human thing.  Aaaah, I could go on about ‘em all day… A bot can’t even appreciate how magnificent her tits are, ya know?”  
  
Bastion held up both arms and waved them back and forth fretfully, as if trying to signal that it really did not want to know at all.  
  
There was a higher-pitched beeping, harsh and grating, as Snowball hovered up with its angry eyes alight. With a war cry, it hurtled forward towards the unwary junker, and Bastion practically had to lunge to catch the much smaller drone before it close the distance, having to juggle for control as the little weatherbot fought against it. Ganymede, jostled about inside the winter hat, fluttered out and began admonishing Snowball as well, tweeting madly and hopping up and down on Bastion’s shoulder.  
  
Junkrat curled his lip as he watched, clutching at his throbbing shoulder and snorting before turning away to head back up the hill. “Dunno what’s got into you lot. Whatever. Arright, I guess BigBot got the wood I need, I got the kindling and starter, and now we got our new mates here to watch the eastern side, just to keep a lookout in case Talon’s poking about. C’mon. Sun’s got no light left in it, and we gotta be up first of morning if we wanna get where they are. We can’t jus-” He stumbled suddenly, nearly falling as he swayed a bit back and forth. Bastion perked up and hurried up next to him in some concern, but was violently shrugged off as the junker grabbed onto his wounded arm and jolted away. “I’m fine! Just tired, s’been a long day! Hurry the hell up!”  
  
The bots looked at one another again, and once more, Snowball began signaling that it wanted to just leave and find Mei. But Bastion beeped its disagreement and went plodding after their errant captor. The group returned to camp, albeit reluctantly.  
  
Junkrat busied himself setting up a fire as best he could, one-handed and one-armed as he stacked the logs and positioned their starter. He’d scraped an area free of snow, down to the bare rock, and close enough to the back of the van that some of the heat might collect inside and keep him from freezing to death. At least, that’s what he’d hoped. Maybe he really should have paid more attention to Mei’s nagging about sub-zero survival. If he found her again, he would try to remember to ask her to teach him. For now, he focused on getting the fire started, flopping chest-first onto the ground and peering into the tangle of cotton and twigs.  
  
A flick from one of his lighters sparked bright and yellow against the blue pall of evening, eyes that were almost as the same yellow color watching keenly as the flame caught onto the cotton fibers and began feeding into the rest of it. A few huffing blows from his puckered lips helped it along, moving bits and pieces of sticks and logs above it. He’d always been good at starting fires wherever he went. Campfires, bonfires, garbage fires, arson fires, and one time, on accident, that forest fire that he had never told anybody about, but he didn’t want a repeat of that one now anyway.  
  
“Wish I had somethin’ to eat. Oi, BigBot, how much for Bird?”  
  
Ganymede fluffed up in clear offense, and Bastion shook its head sternly. With a rattling clank, it fell back to sit on the other side of the fire while Snowball sulked in silence, tucked into a gap in its shoulder plates. For a few minutes, there was nothing but the crackle of the growing fire and the faint whisper of a cold breeze. But Junkrat did not like silence, and even if he utterly hated his audience, it was the only audience he had.  
  
“So whaddaya think, bots? Any idea what Talon’s doing here?”  
  
Bastion turned its head and looked into the woods, pointing, but Junkrat remained crouched and watching the fire, not even noticing.  
  
“Bots don’t need t’sleep, guess you got that goin’ for ya. I want you and Snowbot and Bird on alert tonight. Dunno what Talon’s up to, being all the way out here, but if they’re bringin’ in ships like the one what brought us down, they’re likely gonna have more. Might be searchin’ for us even now. And we can’t get caught, because we got to go rescue my girl and my mate. “  
  
“ _Weet-weet-doo_.”  
  
“Just seems a bit suspicious, bringing heavy artillery into the fuckin’ woods for no reason. Might even say we’re…in the middle of _snow-where_!”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Ha! Ya get it, though?”  
  
The two bots glanced at him for a moment, then each other, then continued just sitting there. No response at all; not even a roll of the eyes or a long-suffering sigh or that little curl on the edge of her lips where she was trying not to laugh but wouldn’t let him see it. Nothing. A little pang of worry and sadness rippled through him, catching and dripping off of every bone in his hurt ribcage as it dribbled downward and pooled in his empty gut. He was suddenly keenly aware of Mei’s missing presence more than ever, always one for a snow pun, now a bygone chance to annoy her.  
  
Shoving his good hand near the fire to warm his wet glove, he tried not to imagine her face. “Hmph. Tough crowd.”

* * *

  
  
He thought it had been cold before. But the moment the sun dipped below the treeline, the temperature plummeted. Junkrat was left huddled in the semi-sheltered back of the burnt van, shivering beneath a ‘blanket’ he had made from the ripped-apart seat covers and one of the mylar blankets that had survived the fire. His stomach grumbled and the lack of food soured his mood further, but he was no stranger to hunger. Instead he sneezed miserably and sat staring at the broken canister of biotic compound sitting on the floor nearby.  
  
Not that the bots needed to know, but he couldn’t help but wonder if he was going to die out here. Shite way to go, and there would be nobody to lead the charge to rescue Mei and Hog.  Couldn’t trust an omnic at all, nor the drone. Bird, maybe, but it had too many attachments to the metal things for reasons he didn’t understand. He needed to stay alive, and get himself into semi-fighting condition if he planned to raid a Talon basecamp by his lonesome. Had to move out at first light for sure, and he couldn’t travel like this, much less battle. Hell, in his condition, he might just up and cark it during the night.  
  
Nothing for it, then. Had to break open the biotics and take the chance.  
  
His single good hand gripped a metal pole from the van wreckage, poking at the fire. He watched the end of it slowly glow, then turn red and molten hot. Could cauterize flesh, but he didn’t want to cauterize a literal hole in his chest, or seal the infection inside him. And the biotic compound would need to be managed carefully, even more carefully than when he usually handled other dangerous chemicals.  
  
Needed two hands for something like this…And only one of the others even had hands. The omnic was sitting and quietly feeding little twigs into the fire, watching the way they burned, while the drone sat in idle mode, dots scrolling across its screen.  
  
“Oi! Bigbot!”  
  
Bastion bwooped and looked up, its eyelight blinking.  
  
“Now listen up good. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me…”  
  
“ _Boop dee wee-deet._ ”  
  
“Well, I still don’t like you! But you and Mei like each other, right? You two are…ugh….pals?”  
  
“ _Weet-weet._ ”  
  
The junker pointed at himself, then the bot. “So that means we got a little common ground. We both want Mei back. So you’re gonna help me, so I can help her. Don’t suppose you know anything about doctorin’ on people? You know, healing up flesh instead of metal. I’m guessing you got a pretty hot solder on your repair arm, yeah?”  
  
The omnic tilted its head and brought its repair arm up, which sparked and lit up so hot that it turned blue instead of red.  
  
Junkrat grinned at least a little bit, wiping cold sweat away from his forehead. His hand was shaking, though from cold or fever he couldn’t tell. Probably both. But maybe he could make use of a pair of steadier hands than his. Something with mechanical precision, even. Not that he was keen on letting an omnic anywhere near him, but this was an emergency, and both Mei and Hog needed him to come to their gallant rescue, after all. Besides, when all was said and done, he was pretty sure he could just take out the bastion unit on the down-low and nobody would be any the wiser about him needing help from a…ugh..bot.  
  
He told the omnic his plan, very carefully. It wasn’t a very good plan, no, but it was all he had. And though his original plan was to simply hold the bot hostage on threat of immediate detonation, much to his irritation, the Bastion unit agreed to help with no fuss at all.  
  
So that was how he found himself in near snuggling-distance of an omnic in the back of the van with him, and the anger and hate in him bubbled in his gut and made him want to chunder all over. But even he could be a bloke of proper priorities, from time to time. Still glaring daggers at the docile bot, he cautiously began to peel off his thick winter coat, his sweater, shirt, and his long underwear, all of them pierced through and stained with blood. The flesh around the wound was an angry red and purple, veins spidering away under his skin. When he finally went to pry out the winter hat he had been using to staunch the wound, it came away sticky and oversaturated, black with blood and whorled with translucent strands of yellow pus, like a particularly disgusting ice cream cone of sorts.  
  
He made a face at the hat and tried not to imagine the scolding he’d receive from Ana for ruining the thing. He couldn’t see the wound very well, even when he tucked his chin to his neck and tried to look inside it. But it looked bad on the surface, and he could imagine how much worse it looked inside the meat.  
  
It made him wish that he had some meat, something not his own flesh and not riddled with blood poisoning. More like a nice brisket barbecue. But anyway, he had to focus.  
  
Fucking cold without his layers on, his breath misting steadily into the frigid air. Wouldn’t be long before his skin would turn blue along with the black, it was so cold. But he sprawled out onto his belly, tossing his frag bag out of his own reach. Didn’t like feeling so helpless, but if what came next was half as painful as he assumed, he couldn’t risk blowing himself up along with the bot. Instead he picked up a scrap of seat foam and paused, looking up to where Bastion loomed over him like a nasty metal portent of death.  
  
“Now remember, BigBot. This is just dire straits, I’m only lettin’ you do this because we gotta. Once it’s done, I’m back to the big boss, understand? You uh…You know everything you’ve gotta do, right? This is nasty business, this.”  
  
Bastion chimed and held up the damaged canister of biotic compound. Atop its shoulder, Ganymede hopped up and down, holding a single yellow feather in his beak.  
  
“Yeah…well…Don’t fuck this up!” Junkrat narrowed his eyes at them both, then took a deep breath and shoved the seat foam in between his jaws, tangling his arms together in front of him. With a nod, he steeled himself and lay as still as he could.  
  
Bastion took the feather from its companion, ruffling it very carefully before transferring it to the much smaller precision pinchers in its repair arm. With a cracking sound, the bot broke open the canister, yellow fumes escaping into the air. With the seal broken, they only had a limited amount of time before it evaporated, so it hurried as much as it could afford, dipping the feather into the liquid until the saturation should have been around the right level. Bending down over the wounded junker, the repair arm slid the feather out of the cracked canister, and began to paint the inside of the wound with the raw liquid.  
  
Beneath them, Junkrat grit his teeth into the foam and breathed through his nose. Like liquid fire being dripped inside him, that’s what it felt like. Far from the soothing mist it should have been. The feather smeared it on the raw parts of his impaled shoulder, and he could feel…something or other…happening inside, and he hoped it was just the sensation of his flesh knitting back together. Nasty feeling. Horrible feeling.  
  
The bloody feather was pulled away, Ganymede plucked a new one, and it was dipped into the compound once more, Bastion painting the shining red meat with more of the ichor. Junkrat’s tangled arms shuddered, his good hand forming a fist and pounding down several times on the metal floor as he hissed and uttered muffled curses through the stuffing in his mouth.  
  
Bastion chimed again and repeated the process, slowly layering more and more of the compound into the ravaged wound. Occasionally it would clump on the feather, and would eat away bits of muscle and tissue where it should have rebuilt them, and it would have to try again. And though it had a very good concept of what pain was, it seemed a little surprised at the amount of agony that it was causing its erstwhile patient. Junkrat’s eyes were rolling like a wounded animal’s, and after a while he couldn’t help but to try and squirm away, if only to lessen some of the burning. Heavy metal limbs held him down, pinning him in place, and again the compound was dripped into the damaged flesh as he uttered a muffled shout beneath.  
  
At some point, Bastion ran out of the biotic liquid. It seeped away into the air, evaporated away, and it scraped one last feather around the edge of the ragged wound. It hadn’t worked particularly well, but it had helped. It was still raw and angry and red inside, but some of the black was gone. It could no longer see straight through the gaping hole to the ground, at least, and some of the flesh had begun to knit itself in order. Only one last thing to do, per Junkrat’s own orders.  
  
Still holding the Junker in place with its hand and the stump of its gun arm, its repair protocol took over, the solder in its tool arm lighting up white and blue hot. Even as Junkrat banged his forehead pleadingly on the ground, it brought the tiny flame-heated metal down…and began to melt the edges of the wound closed. Gray smoke rose from the junker’s sizzling flesh as it was cauterized shut.  
  
Beneath the omnic, Junkrat made a very strange noise and suddenly lay very still. Bastion blinked, then blared a little alarm beep when it saw liquid start seeping from the foam in his mouth, pulling it out of his jaws. A small tide of vomit followed it, and Bastion rushed to turn the limp body over, hurriedly burning the other side of the wound shut in the same way. After that…it wasn’t entirely sure. It was not a medical bot. So it could do little besides turn his prone body onto his side, tug him away from the spreading pool of sickly liquid dribbling down the incline, and cover him with all his clothing again.  
  
The commotion had attracted the worried attentions of even Snowball, who hovered into the van and beeped in some amount of reluctant concern.  
  
Junkrat, finally having mercifully passed out, did not respond.

* * *

  
  
Snowball wished to know what to do if the junker died.  
  
Bastion was not sure.  
  
Snowball wished to leave and go find Mei.  
  
Bastion wished to find Mei too, but it could not leave the junker here.  
  
Snowball did not like Junkrat. And Junkrat did not like any of them.  
  
Bastion knew this, but it could not leave the junker here.  
  
Snowball queried if the junker would continue to be a threat to them.  
  
Bastion was not sure.  
  
Snowball wished to leave and go find Mei.  
  
Bastion knew this, but it could not leave the junker here.  
  
Snowball wished to leave and go find Mei.  
  
Snowball wished to leave and go find Mei.  
  
Snowball wished to leave and go find Mei.  
  
Bastion did not respond. Bastion showed signs of distress. Transfer. Receiving signal.  
  
Snowball queried. No signal found. What signal?  
  
Bastion stood from where it loomed over the still-unconscious form of the human, clanking out back to the campfire. It stood at the very edge of the light, staring out at the blue-blackness of the forest night. Even though Snowball drifted after it, still querying repeatedly, Bastion did not seem to respond. Its eyelight flashed, and it stood very still as if listening, before beeping aloud.

 _Dee-doo-da-da-dooooo…Dee-doo-da-da-doooooo…_  
  
Audible song? Song unrecognized. Snowball queried again but again received no answer. It hovered over in front of the omnic, beeping and trying repeatedly to get its companion’s attention. Still there was no response. Clicking on its searchlight, it shined a beam into the woods down the hill, but could see nothing but criss-crossed pine branches and the darkness of thick foliage. It listened, changed its scanners to several sets of different frequencies. But it could find nothing amiss.  
  
_Dee-doo-da-da-dooooo…Dee-doo-da-da-doooooo…_  
  
_Can’t…_  
  
Bastion continued singing, but its song sounded wrong. Something was wrong. It took another step towards the woods. Snowball disliked this, and pushed back, setting its top against the other bot’s chest and struggling. Bastion did not seem to notice, and took another step towards the woods. Then another. Snowball, hopelessly overpowered, still fought to keep it from going. At a loss, and as Bastion started to reach the darkness of the woods, it finally ran out of options. It backed up several paces, fired its hover jets all at once, and rocketed forward to slam itself into Bastion’s head.  
  
There was a loud metallic clonk, and Snowball bounced off the other bot and spun off into the snowbank, left half-buried upside down and waving its fins helplessly. Bastion blinked, seemingly jarred out of its trance, then beeped in surprise and hurried over to pull the drone out of the snow, brushing it off. Snowball performed an animated sweatdrop of relief, and queried what had happened. What had triggered its non-response? What was going on?  
  
Bastion…could not say. Query denied. Apologies.  
  
They were both interrupted by faint sounds back at the van. Junkrat had woken up, at least partially, and was shivering madly and talking to himself in a delirious-sounding murmur of not-quite-language. He was gray in the face and his lips were an unhealthy blue pallor, and Bastion quickly moved to put more wood on the fire outside the entrance. The junker’s eyes were half open but unseeing, rolling drunkenly in their sockets as he continued to address his bodyguard and his girlfriend…neither of whom were at all present.  
  
“S’not right, Roadie, s’not right…waved right down the…and then…Mei, darl, turn it down…Turn it down…S’cold…”  
  
Bastion wished to lessen the human’s distress but did not know how. It queried if Snowball had anything that might pacify him.  
  
Snowball thought about it, but questioned why it should.  
  
Bastion answered, because Mei would have wanted them to.  
  
Snowball agreed. Reluctantly.  
  
It settled down on a ruined crate and turned on an audio log. Mei’s voice, though tinny from recording equipment, played throughout the little van. “Snowball, are you logging this? It’s…March fifteenth? No, sorry! March sixteenth! Sorry, the days blur together a little sometimes.”  
  
Junkrat paused in his struggles, seemingly listening.  
  
“I just got done compiling the new data. It’s fascinating! I mean…I think it’s actually bad news…but it’s still fascinating. We’ve never seen patterns like this. I’ll have more to tell everyone when it’s done processing, but we have other troubles on our hands. I think I’ve nearly cracked the case, Snowball! Who’s been stealing my good noodles from home, even though I had my name _clearly_ written on them, and nobody else spells with Chinese characters. I’ve narrowed it down to MacReady and Torres…MacCready had one of the empty containers in her trash can, but Torres was seen walking away from the cabinet with something under his coat. I just have to get a little more evidence and then I think I’ll set up a sting operation to catch the noodle thief!”  
  
Junkrat managed a reedy little laugh as he listened, mumbling a barely-aware. “Get ‘em, darl.”  
  
Bastion looked down at him, reaching up and pulling off the yellow bobble-tipped winter hat that Ana had made for it. Even though Ganymede gave it a rather grumpy look, it went to pull the hat on over the human’s tufted hair, leaving its unbuttoned straps around his chin. Junkrat shuddered and coughed but did not respond, and merely listened as Snowball started up another of Mei’s audio recordings.  
  
It lifted its head again, stepped over the puddle of vomit by the door, and clanked back out by the fire. It sat there, at the very edge of the light, between the yellow of the campfire and the blue of the cold dark, staring back into the woods once more. The moon was high in the sky now, but little of its light could penetrate the sharp needle canopy of the northern conifers. The stars shone bright and sharp and unfeeling above them, broken occasionally by a gray wisp of cloud, or the trailing light of a passing satellite rotating around the earth.  
  
Bastion sat there, watching for trouble and singing along with the song that only it could hear.  
  
_Dee-doo-da-da-dooooo…Dee-doo-da-da-doooooo…_


End file.
